Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (35 page)

I examined the rest of the fragments in a desultory manner, conscious of an allusion that had escaped me. What was it?
Affection? Promise?
Nothing to do with those; they were words so debased by the traffic of every day, as to have lost any charge of meaning.
Death
, then—it must strike any reader dumb with its awful truth. And perhaps the word
chemise
.

Mrs. Grey, indeed, had found death in her chemise.

I shivered from a cold that owed nothing to the rain, and looked sharply once more at the fragments of paper.

The fractured words, it is true, could tell me little. But I had neglected to consider of the hand.

A firm hand, and yet light in its strokes, like the finest sort of engraving. There was the
S
, scrawled distinct in the—
mise
, like a sail unfurled on a t'gallant yard. I had seen this hand before, tho' only briefly. It was the distinctive sloping script of the Gentleman Improver, Julian Sothey.

1
Jane Walker Leigh (1704-68) was Jane Austen's maternal grandmother. —
Editor's note.

24 August 1805, cont'd.

T
OWARDS NOON MY BROTHERS RETURNED FROM THE
Hoop & Griffin in Deal—travel-weary, drenched to the skin, and quite put out of humour.

Denys Collingforth's body had revealed nothing of the nature of his murderer, and far too much of the grisly manner of his demise. Henry, I understood from several delicate intimations of the Justice's, had been quite sick for a quarter-hour together, and could not be brought to look upon the corpse again; Neddie had only suffered it through the application of a handkerchief to the nose, and a stout brandy to the stomach.

The cords of the neck were severed quite through, my brother told me, and must have spattered the murderer's clothes in the cutting. Neddie had hired a team of local labourers to dredge the millpond whence the body was recovered, and scour the surrounding underbrush, in the faint hope of discovering the murderer's discarded clothing, which might yet bear a tailor's or a launderer's mark; but he held out very little hope of their discovery. A clever man, who had planned Collingforth's death, might as easily have carried a change of clothes, and burned the bloodied ones along the way. Or he might simply have disguised his sins with a voluminous driving cape until achieving the sprawl of London. There any amount of refuse might be discarded undetected.

“And how was Collingforth's body recognised in Deal?” Lizzy enquired, a faint line of confusion between her brows.

“He had been seen in that town on Thursday morning, by one of his acquaintance—a Mr. Pembroke, not unknown among the Sporting Set. As I understand it, Pembroke makes a tidy profession of cheating at cards, Lizzy; and Collingforth was formerly intimate with him. He espied Collingforth loitering in a doorway in a shabby part of town, looking quite desperate; and as Pembroke could not believe him capable of murder— he had heard the news of Mrs. Grey's death, and the result of Wednesday's inquest—he undertook to shield his old friend. He carried Mr. Collingforth away to his rooms, and kept him there, drinking brandy until after dark. Poor Collingforth was almost beside himself at the news of the charge laid against him, Pembroke said— and they agreed that the best course he might adopt, was to get himself away to the Continent. The Downs anchorage is at Deal, you know—and Pembroke charged his friend with buying a passage on any ship that might soon weigh anchor, and be away. Indeed, he pressed some money upon Collingforth for that express purpose, although he declined the office of arranging the matter for him—Pembroke was loath to entangle himself in the flight of a man charged with murder.”

“As he was quick to point out to Mr. Justice Austen,” I murmured, amused. “Have you questioned this fellow narrowly, Neddie? He seems entirely too plausible. Might he not have helped Mr. Collingforth into the millpond, for a small consideration between friends?”

“I am before you, Jane,” my brother retorted with a smile; “I have learned, independent of Mr. Pembroke, that he parted from Collingforth at ten o'clock. His landlady—an elderly, quite disinterested personage— was required to bar the door behind the two men, and found them utterly disguised with drink. Pembroke met with an acquaintance in the street, who bore him away to a cockfight, and remained in his company some hours; Collingforth, much muffled as a surety against discovery, set off towards the Downs anchorage. That is the last that Pembroke saw of him—until learning by chance that a murdered man had been found on Friday, and was lying at the Hoop & Griffin, he stopped to view the corpse.”

We were all silent an instant, in consideration.

“And so Mr. Collingforth never booked his passage,” I mused. “One is compelled to wonder why. Was he afraid of discovery?—Or discovered, in fact, between the time he parted from friend Pembroke, and fetched up at the quai's steps?”

“If the landlady may be believed, and Collingforth was decidedly in wine, he cannot have posed much resistance,” Henry observed sombrely. “Two stout fellows— or even one in his right senses—might have bagged him as easily as a bird.”

“I cannot think that many of the townsfolk should have recognised him,” Lizzy objected. “Deal is above sixteen miles from his home at Prior's Farm! He cannot often have had occasion to go there.”

Neddie shrugged. “Denys Collingforth was generally to be found wherever there was a matter of sport—or a wager that might be laid against it. I should not be surprised to learn that he was known, among certain circles, in every town in Kent. And you forget, my dear, that he was a hunted man. I posted an offer of one hundred pounds for his retrieval, unharmed—a handsome sum, in the eyes of many.”

“And thus sealed his death warrant,” I concluded, “for whoever killed Denys Collingforth had determined that he should
not
return unharmed. Such an eventuality could hardly serve the purpose of Mrs. Grey's murderer. Better he should die, and the whole affair die with him.”

My brother went pale. I had spoken without consideration—and now regretted the callous words immeasurably. “Do not blame yourself, Neddie!” I cried hastily. “I would not have you to feel yourself in the slightest regard responsible. You acted as a reasonable man should always think best—and cannot have foreseen the outcome. We may yet discover, moreover, that Mr. Collingforth was killed by a common footpad.”

He did not reply, but sat staring at the small gilt table before him, as tho' he saw the dead Collingforth's ravaged face reflected in its surface. Lizzy went to him, and seized his hand; Henry looked at me speakingly, and I felt myself very much to blame. It is always Neddie's way to harbour his injuries, where the rest of us might find relief in a single outburst; and I knew, from the cast of my brother's countenance, that my unwitting blow had gone home.

“What shall you do, my love?” Lizzy gendy enquired.

He turned to stare at her blankly, and seemed to emerge from reverie.

“Why—as to that, my dear, I believe I have done all that I can, as Jane so righdy observes. I have despatched a messenger to London, with a request of the magistrates for any intelligence regarding Mr. Collingforth's absent friend, Mr. Everett. I have ordered the constable at Deal to interrogate the captains still anchored in the Downs, in the hope of discovering whether Collingforth attempted to purchase a passage on Thursday night; and I have set another man on the trail of Mr. Grey.”

“Mr. Grey?” she exclaimed. “But Mr. Grey was gone to London on Thursday night!”

“—or so his housekeeper was informed,” Neddie sanguinely returned. His eyes met mine over the crown of his wife's head. “But I have had cause to wonder, my dear, if his midnight messenger was not from London, but rather a man sent by Mr. Pembroke of Deal, who detained his friend so long over a bottle in the privacy of his rooms. Such an interval might allow of communication with The Larches. Perhaps Mr. Pembroke thought to retrieve tenfold the passage money lent to Collingforth, in a small service to Mr. Grey.”

I
T WAS WELL AFTER NOON BY THE TIME
N
EDDIE'S RE
cital was done. He took a small nuncheon, exchanged his soiled clothes for fresh, and rang for Pratt around the hour of one o'clock. Some moments later we set off for The Larches and our call of condolence, in a carriage closed against the final showers of rain. Lizzy was a picture of fashionable decorum—her dark grey dress a trifle warm for the season, but perfectly suited to mourning; and just elegant enough, with a latticework of black satin running about the bodice, and a trim of jet beads capping her white shoulder, to proclaim it only recently delivered from the modiste's. More black ribbon was twined among her auburn curls, and jet dangled from her ears. She had adopted a pert little illusion veil that slanted fetchingly over one eye, and her gloves were dove-grey lace.

For my own part, I had removed the traces of ash from my person; pinned up the straying fragments of my hair, and exchanged my very damp muslin for a dry one. The period of mourning undergone for my late father being so recently at an end, I boasted no less than
three
gowns suitable for the occasion—and detested every one of them. The sight of dusky cloth must always evoke the most painful memories. I spurned them all, and borrowed a lavender muslin from my sister's store, left behind when she removed to Goodnestone.

“How far is The Larches, Lizzy?” I enquired, as the chaise slowed to skirt a daunting puddle.

“Not above five miles, I should think. We might achieve it in half an hour. You shall like to revisit the neighbourhood, Jane—it is not far from Rowling, a place you always regarded with affection.”

Rowling! I had not thought of it in an age; it might be a word from my vanished girlhood, and to speak it again thrust me swiftly back in memory. It is a smallish house— litde more than a cottage, in fact—that sits about a mile from Goodnestone Farm. Neddie and Elizabeth spent their earliest years at Rowling, before old Mrs. Knight made over Godmersham to Edward, and removed herself to White Friars. I had spent some weeks at Rowling when I was twenty; it was there I learned to admire Mr. Edward Taylor's beautiful dark eyes, and tried to forget the hazel ones of a certain Tom Lefroy. I had danced the Boulanger at Goodnestone Farm, and walked home in the dark under a borrowed umbrella. At Rowling I had begun my work upon
Elinor and Marianne
, and struggled with the burlesque of
Susan.
Such a place must always linger in memory as fondly as dear Steventon—the scene of youthful hopes and dreams. So many of them dashed.
1

“How I wish that we might have time to walk around the garden,” I said wistfully.

“You shall have walking enough at The Larches,” Neddie reminded me. “There is not a finer showplace in Kent.”

“Particularly now that Mr. Sothey has had his way with it,” I observed.

We proceeded then in silence, for Lizzy was not of a disposition for idle chatter, and my brothers were too weary to keep their eyes from closing. Tho' I would have given much for their opinion of my morning's discoveries—the curious fact of Mr. Sothey's handwriting, on letters destroyed by the governess—I could not feel it wise to canvass the matter so soon. My own part in disturbing the ashes was suspect enough, and open to censure; but I hesitated to expose Anne Sharpe to the contempt of her employers. Lizzy should be unlikely to look with favour on a governess familiar with intrigue; she would not scruple to dismiss a woman whom she considered unsuitable for the instruction of her daughters; and that I might be the agent of Anne Sharpe's ruin, was more than I could bear.

I could conceive a perfectly innocent explanation for the entire matter. Anne Sharpe had been taken much into Society during her years with the Portermans, and it was not incredible that she should have met Sothey somewhere, and formed an attachment. Fortune being scant on either side, the two might have considered it imprudent to marry, and determined to separate. Miss Sharpe came to my sister, in the regrettable role of governess, while Mr. Sothey was left to barter his talent for the arrangement of landscape. The gentieman might quickly have thrown himself into new things, new acquaintance—including his
affaire
with Francoise Grey. Miss Sharpe's heart, however, may have proved unequal to her sense of duty.