Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (16 page)

My unfortunate brother opened his mouth, blushed red, and averted his gaze, to my profound amusement.

“As to
that
—I believe I shall await the coroner's report as to the state of the body,” he replied. “But you mistake my meaning, Jane. I am perfectly well aware that a riding habit may prove an impediment to certain types of sport, and it is possible that Mrs. Grey divested herself of the garment with exactly the intention you suspect. But why remove the habit from the scene of the corpse's discovery? Why not leave it where the body was found?—If, indeed, the lady was even killed in Collingforth's chaise. And if she was not… how should her murderer transport a corpse, dressed only in a shift, under the eyes of all Canterbury?”

I had asked myself a similar question only yesterday. “I had believed the point was moot. We must assume that the murderer shifted the chaise—either to intercept Mrs. Grey on the Wingham road, or to transport her cooling body.”

“Pretty tho the plan may be, dear Jane, it cannot explain the disposal of the habit. Why should the murderer bother to thrust the thing under a hedgerow, if it bears no sign against himself?”

“Then let us dispute the matter less,” Neddie broke in, “and examine the habit more.”

He fetched his quizzing glass from the desk, and pored over the scarlet stuff. Lizzy ran her fingers thoughtfully along the hems, as tho' calculating the cost of its gold frogging, while Henry began to count the trail of buttons rather hurriedly under his breath. I merely stood by and surveyed their endeavours with a bemused expression. At length Neddie perceived my inactivity, and looked up.

“Yes, Jane?”

“It is the custom for ladies who ride, as you know, to carry nothing on their persons, not even a reticule. Their hands must necessarily be reserved for the control of the reins. And yet Mrs. Grey, travelling alone yesterday as she did, must have carried some provision about her. There are no pockets let into the seams of this gown; therefore I suggest you look for one concealed in the interior—perhaps within the lining.”

“Excellent thought!” my brother cried, and seized the gown immediately.

“Not at the waist, dear,” Lizzy advised him, “for it should never do to carry coins below the breast. I would survey the bodice itself.”

And there, in an instant, we found what we were seeking—a small pocket of cloth, let into the bodice's lining, quite invisible from the gown's exterior and only large enough to hold a trifle. Mrs. Grey, it seemed, had employed it to conceal a piece of notepaper. Any coins or bills she might have held had long since disappeared.

“Quickly, Neddie,” Lizzy cried, with something closer to animation than I had ever observed in my brother's wife, “spread it out so that we all might see.” The note was dated hurriedly, and rather illegibly,
19 August 1805-
— the very date of yesterday's race-meeting.

Ma chere Francoise
—

You must know that I am a man run mad. If you do not consent to hear me, I will have but one recourse. Oh, God, that I had never seen your face! The Devil himself may assume just such a form, and move with such wanton grace, and yet remain the very soul of evil.

I shall be waiting in my chaise before the final heat is run. A word, a look, will tell me all
—
my salvation or destruction, equally in your hands.

It was signed Denys Collingforth.

“Good God!” Lizzy ejaculated, and sat down abruptly in a chair. “So it is all a pack of lies! Collingforth
did
communicate with Mrs. Grey at the race-meeting, and the result was her furtive visit to the chaise. He must have seen her there. They must have spoken. And when she refused to meet his demands, he killed her in a rage!”

“You forget,” I said gendy. “We all observed her, large as life, an hour after the visit to Collingforth's chaise.”

“What is that?” Lizzy snapped her fingers dismissively. “The scoundrel merely awaited her departure, and pursued her along the Wingham road. We have divined it all an age ago—we merely lacked sufficient proofs. The cowardly rogue, to discover her corpse himself, and protest an innocence that must be the grossest falsehood!”

“But why divest the lady of her habit?” Henry persisted. “I cannot find the sense of it. Did he suspect her to retain the telltale note, he might merely have searched the body for it. Depriving Mrs. Grey of her clothing, without destroying the letter, can have served him nothing.”

“Perhaps he could not conceive of the cunning bodice pocket, and in his haste, merely disposed of the clothing as a surety,” I suggested.

We were silent a moment in contemplation.

“I cannot like it,” Neddie declared, and commenced to turn before the library's windows. “As my dear Lizzy has said, the note must strike at the very heart of motive. Whether he speaks of unrequited love—or unforgiven debt—Collingforth betrays an ungovernable passion; and the violence of his feeling might well have ended in murder.”

“You must expose him to the coroner, I suppose?” Lizzy enquired faintly.

“I have no choice.”

“But you
will
inform Mr. Collingforth of your discovery before tomorrow's inquest,” I said. “Common decency would urge such a small consideration. He must be afforded a chance to explain himself.”

Neddie did not immediately reply, but stood in a sombre attitude before the open windows. No breeze stirred the dark hair that fell ardessly across his brow; and if he perceived a little of the twilight scene beyond the glass, it was not reflected in the blankness of his gaze. Heavy thought, and warring duties, and the weight of care sat hard upon my brother's countenance. Then at last he wheeled and crossed to his wife.

“I fear, my dear, that regardless of the hour I must ride out to Prior's Farm, and destroy Collingforth's complaisance entirely. It is too grave and too ugly a business, to await the inquest in the morning.” He kissed her hand and looked to Henry. “Will you ride with me, brother? I cannot like the Kentish roads at present. Between the unknown murderer and the French invader, a man might find his death in any number of ways.”

“I should ride with you in any case,” Henry retorted, “as you very well know. But I wonder, Neddie, where you think to find Mr. Collingforth. As I intimated at dinner, he is believed to have fled.”

“We must begin at Prior's Farm, and follow where the trail might lead. Do not sit up in expectation of our return,” Neddie called to his wife, “for we shall be very late upon the road.”

Wednesday
21 August 1805

W
E DID NOT SIT UP IN EXPECTATION OF MY BROTHERS'
return, but tho' I followed the mistress of Godmersham to bed in an hour's time, neither could I sleep. The unhealthy excitement of the past two days quite robbed me of tranquillity, and so I took up my pen and the little book of unlined paper I keep always about me, and set down this account of the day. My candle-flame barely flickered in the torpid air, and but for the scratch of the nib in the breathless room, the great house was unnaturally quiet. I had not doused the light a half-hour, however, before the hallooing of the porter at the gate, and the clatter of horses' hooves on the sweep, announced the gendemen's return.

I hoped for a full account this morning, but was most tediously put off—for when I sought the breakfast-parlour at ten o'clock, I found only Lizzy in possession, and a very cross Lizzy, indeed.

“Your brothers are already gone, Jane,” she said over her teacup, “for the inquest is to be at noon, and Neddie
would
search the hedgerows with that detestable man Pyke, before he might face the coroner with something like self-possession.”

“Then let us hope that Pyke has consulted his lad,” I returned, “that Neddie's efforts might end in something.”

'You do think of everything, Jane.” Lizzy set down her cup and dusted her fingertips for crumbs. “I am sure that Neddie should be lost without you and Henry to give him spur. I required him to return to the house before venturing into Canterbury, by the by, in the event you wished to accompany him….”

Lizzy's natural delicacy prevented her from adding the words, “…
since you have made such a habit of inquests of late
, “and I mentally praised the excellent breeding of baronets' daughters. I settled myself into a chair.

“Tea, Daisy, I think—and perhaps some toast.”

“Very good, miss.” The housemaid bobbed vaguely in my direction, and quitted the room with obvious reluctance. I leaned conspiratorially towards Lizzy.

“What of Collingforth and the interesting note?”

“I could get nothing from your brother—except that Collingforth was not to be found at Prior's Farm, and his wife has not seen him since Monday e'en. Neddie says that she was quite distracted, and fainted twice in a quarter-hour.”

“Did they show her the unfortunate note?”

“Why else should she faint?”

“I suppose we must conclude the hand to be Collingforth's, then. And Mr. Everett?”

“—was naturally your brother's next resort. But when Neddie arrived quite late at the Hound and Tooth, it was to be greeted with the intelligence that Mr. Everett had settled his bill some hours since, and had quitted the place entirely.”

“Then it is as Henry feared. Collingforth and Everett have fled in terror of the Law.”

Lizzy nodded expressionlessly. “I confess your poor brother has taken it quite to heart. He feels himself to be excessively to blame, and utterly in neglect of his duty— however little any of us should tell him so.”

“You may be certain that Mr. Grey will not be so forbearing.”

“This flight cannot help Collingforth's chances before the coroner and his panel,” Lizzy added.

The passage door swung open, and Daisy's young face appeared over a tray of tea and toast. I accepted it gratefully, and poured out a cup.

“It must look like an admission of guilt,” I agreed. “But I wonder—”

'You cannot believe him innocent, Jane!”

“A wider experience of the world has taught me, Lizzy, that I am capable of believing any number of things. Denys Collingforth might be a murderer, it is true—or he may be merely a man pushed past endurance, by an unhappy congruence of circumstances. Ruined by debt, and now suspected of murder—what desperate fellow, unsure of his chances, might not resort to flight?”

Lizzy considered this in silence, while I consumed a quantity of toast. Godmersham's stillroom was evident upon the table, in an admirable preserve of quince, that I knew I should long for in the relative deprivation of a Bath winter.

“I suppose anyone might have murdered the woman, and placed the note in her bodice,” Lizzy observed at last.

“But the handwriting?”

My sister shrugged. “Let us suppose that Collingforth sent the letter after all—that he sent it well before the events of Monday, and the note survived in Mrs. Grey's correspondence.”

“But Monday's date is inscribed above.”

“It is a small thing to forge a date, Jane—hardly of the same order as the forgery of an entire note.”

“Very true. I confess, Lizzy, that I had no notion you possessed so cunning a mind. You display a decided talent for subterfuge, and were Neddie aware of it, he should never trust you farther from home than Chilham.”

“I have spent the better part of my existence in deceiving my friends,” she returned with complaisance, “and if you betray me to the world, Jane, I shall deny you the freedom of Godmersham forever.”

“Your secret is safe with me. But there is one point on which I should like your opinion. A note of Collingforth's, placed to advantage and quite out of context, should serve, like the body in the chaise, to throw suspicion far from the actual murderer. But why conceal the note in the habit? Why not leave it in Mrs. Grey's dead hand?”

“Perhaps to underline its plausibility,” Lizzy offered. “Two such items, found together, might appear excessive. But placed at a distance, and discovered by individual parties, entirely without reference to one another—”

“Admirable.” I partook of the last bit of toast with regret. “The coroner is unlikely to exhibit so much imagination, however.”

“You comprehend, Jane, that our notion is only possible if we suppose the murderer to possess an intimacy with Mrs. Grey's correspondence.” Lizzy refolded her napkin and arranged it beside her plate. “Someone of her household, perhaps.”

Or someone familiar at least with her desk. The image of Captain Woodford and Edward Bridges in the lady's saloon the night of her murder filled my mind. But I only gazed at Lizzy speculatively.

'You
are in
a fever to indict Mr. Grey, my dear. And the poor man has done very little that we know of, to deserve it!”

“He had the shockingly bad form to marry that woman in the first place,” she replied caustically, “and to challenge my husband in the second. I cannot like him, Jane, however little I love poor Collingforth.”