Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (44 page)

“The library?” cried my brother Neddie with considerable indignation. He held aloft a taper, and stared at us all from the library doorway, with undisguised disgust. “Say rather the kitchens! I have been standing fully two hours behind these damnable drapes, and I refuse to remain in that room a moment longer! If your sense of honour requires an explanation, Finch-Hatton, then pray let it be conducted in a civilised manner—over a quantity of bread and butter.”

“I thought you must be concealed behind the drapes,” Mr. Emilious replied companionably. “It was either yourself or a very large rat, that persisted in knocking against the windowpanes whilst we were engaged in rummaging about your desk. Where, by the by, have you hidden Mrs. Grey's letters?”

Neddie turned without a word and strode down the back passage towards the kitchens. Mr. Emilious held out his hand in a gesture of gallantry; and after a moment's hesitation, the rest of us deigned to follow.

Monday, 26 August 1805
,
near dawn

“I
SUPPOSE
,” M
R
. E
MILIOUS
F
INCH
-H
ATTON BEGAN, AS
he helped himself to some of Cook's excellent currant jam, “you are wild to know how I come into this tangled business.”

“You flatter yourself, sir,” Neddie replied. “For my part, I should be happy to learn so litde as the manner of Mrs. Grey's death. Your own machinations are immaterial.”

“I should like to know any number of things,” I broke in, “and am not averse to hearing Mr. Finch-Hatton. I rather think we shall come to the matter of Mrs. Grey, in time.”

“Excellent woman!” Mr. Emilious cried. “Lord Harold has assuredlyjudged you aright.”

“Am I to conclude, then, that Lord Harold is aware of his friend's involvement in an affair of murder?”

“He warned me against you, you know,” Mr. Emilious said by way of answer. “He thought you likely to be my worst enemy, my dear Miss Austen. I endeavoured to make you my friend —but alas, events moved well beyond my ordering of them, with the discovery of those letters. Mr. Grey happened upon the correspondence, I suppose?”

“He did,” Neddie supplied.

Mr. Emilious leaned forward in some excitement, to the detriment of his shirtsleeves, which were smeared with butter. “Did he tell you where he discovered them? For upon my word, the fellows I had hoped might effect it, were quite pitiful in the application!”

“Mr. Bridges and Captain Woodford?” I surmised.

“The very same. I led those two excellent fellows to believe it a matter of some delicacy, that should compromise the lady's reputation before her husband. Woodford agreed in an instant, from concern for his friend Grey; Mr. Bridges, quite naturally, had other motives. He accepted the task for a small consideration. A man whose circumstances are so thoroughly embarrassed, must be open to almost any application. But I believe the two had a falling-out, over the question of the letters' whereabouts; each suspected the other's motives.”

“You are not a man to soil your own hands, I perceive.”

“It was hardly a question of
that
, Miss Austen, but one rather of efficiency. It would have looked too odd for So they to return to the house, you know, and I had never been an intimate there—but I am getting ahead of myself. Where were the letters discovered?”

“You shall have to enquire of Mr. Grey yourself,” Neddie replied, “for he did not think to tell me. That is, if you possess sufficient courage to meet with Mr. Grey.”

The older man shook his head sadly over his hunk of bread. “I assure you, Mr. Austen, that you have completely misjudged me. I had nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs. Grey's end; except, perhaps, in the precipitation of it. I was never so fortunate as to meet the lady.”

“Tho' you learned much of her, from your associate Mr. Sothey,” I supplied. “You had encountered him before, at George Canning's; perhaps he came to you in some distress, once he knew that he had fallen into the woman's power, and was being employed for her own devious purposes.”

“I, employed by Mrs.
Grey}”
Mr. Sothey interjected with a bitter laugh. “I fear, Miss Austen, that you have got it the wrong way round.”

I looked from the improver to Mr. Emilious, much struck. 'You would mean to say, Mr. Sothey, that you went to The Larches nearly seven months ago, for the express purpose of observing Mrs. Grey?”

“It was for that Mr. Canning ensured my introduction to Grey. I was peculiarly suited to the task, Miss Austen, in being an improver of landscape; Mr. Grey, as you know, has a passion for his grounds, and as a result of his recent marriage, was determined to spend much of his time in Kent. Canning—who, in his capacity as Treasurer of the Navy, is charged with the administration of the Government's Secret Funds—had long suspected the nature of Grey's marriage.
1
He believed the lady's family intended to use its influence with Grey to the detriment of the Kingdom's fortunes. You may well enquire how he came to believe this; let it suffice to say that Canning is familiar with the Comte de Penfleur these many years.”

“And so he sent you, Mr. Sothey, to spy on the Grey household.”

Anne Sharpe moaned softly, and covered her face with her hands. Mr. Sothey's countenance wore a fleeting look of pain; but he kept his eyes averted from his beloved. “He did. I had been in the employ of Mr. Canning for some time—ever since the end of peace had enforced my return from the Continent.
2
My reputation ensured my acceptance among the households of the Great; I was thus in a position to go anywhere, and see everyone. My work, I may say, has proved invaluable to Canning and his clandestine office.”

“Then at Weymouth—” Anne Sharpe began, with a desperate look.

“—at Weymouth I was charged with the cultivation of General Sir Thomas Porterman,” he concluded. “I was
not
charged with making love to his ward—of that you may be certain. It is to my own detriment, and that of my Government, that I have come to care for Miss Anne Sharpe so deeply; but I begin to think the difficulty will resolve itself, with time.” The bitterness had only deepened in Mr. Sothey's voice; he certainly believed the governess was lost to him.

“Do you mean to say,” my brother enquired, “that the entire seven months you were resident at The Larches, you were working upon the lady of the house?—Endeavouring to win her trust, with the object of defeating the Comte de Penfleur?”

“How succinctly you put things, Mr. Austen, to be sure,” Mr. Emilious returned. “Sothey was charged with winning the lady's confidence, and with supplying her with some information that was … shall we say, less than accurate. Mrs. Grey became Canning's most useful channel for the confusion of the enemy; for her sources were so varied, in comprising half the county, and yet so much in conflict with one another, that the Comte could hardly determine which intelligence to credit, and which to discount. Sothey's being so much a friend to Mr. Grey, and so clearly in his confidence, must argue assurance in his regard; whereas the more suspect among the group—such as Denys Collingforth, a desperate man, and Lady Forbes, a very silly woman—might be dismissed. However much truth they managed to convey.”

“I must congratulate you on a certain brilliance in your conduct, Sothey,” my brother said. “It defies belief. And Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton, I presume, is your superior in Canning's line?”

“Call me colleague, rather,” Mr. Emilious said, “and I am satisfied. Certainly I should never have trespassed so long upon my brother's generosity, by remaining at Eastwell, had not Sothey required the possibility of a bolt-hole. Should the need of quitting The Larches arise, I was to be depended upon. And in the meanwhile, I may say that I served as his occasional counsel. Little that Mrs. Grey had under contemplation was unknown to me.”

“But to what end?” I broke in. “The matter of Spanish lace?”

Both men stared, then looked at one another in perplexity. “Spanish lace?”

“That is what the Comte de Penfleur was wont to call it. Neddie and I assumed it referred to considerable monies, of which the French government is in daily expectation. We understood from the letters that Mr. Grey was to be influenced by Mr. Sothey, towards the end of procuring foreign funds—possibly in Amsterdam, or in Spain. But we cannot determine whether the monies ever arrived—or whether Mrs. Grey was killed before the plan was effected. Certainly the continued presence of the Comte de Penfleur in England would argue a doubt.”

“As would the failure of the French fleet to invade our shores,” Mr. Emilious returned gravely. “There cannot be an invasion, my dear Miss Austen, without there are funds to drive it. You may be assured those funds—whatever Mrs. Grey may have intended—will never arrive.”

“The funds were drawn from Grey's bank, I presume?” Neddie's countenance was carefully controlled, but his eyes glittered strangely as he looked at me. He was in the grip, I should judge, of a powerful excitement; while for my part, I felt only a curious lethargy— the result, one assumes, of too much conversation and too litde sleep.

“Grey's bank? Good Lord, no!” Mr. Emilious laughed. “He was required to offer surety for the funds' transferal, of course—that is the usual way of things, in such matters of international finance—but the monies were to be shipped from the Americas.”

“The Americas?”

“From Spain's colonies, to be exact. You must know that every summer, before the onset of the hurricane season, the Spanish treasure ships set out for Cadiz. They have done so for nearly two centuries, bearing cargoes of silver and pieces of eight.”

“But what has that to do with Mr. Grey?” I cried.

“Very little. Pray hear me out, Miss Austen, and all shall become clear.” Mr. Emilious looked at me sternly from under his elegant grey brows, and I was forced to submit. I wondered, however, how such a man could ever have formed a friendship with Lord Harold. While the one was bruisingly to the point, the other was tedious in the extreme. Both, I must suppose, were assiduous in the marshalling of fact, however; and in this, their talents might be prized.

“According to her treaties with France, signed over two years ago, Spain is required to contribute six million francs each month to the French treasury.”

“But that is incredible,” Neddie cried. “How is half such a sum to be paid?”

“I used the term
contribute
only loosely, to be sure,” Mr. Emilious replied. “It is the most blatant extortion, at which the fiends of Buonaparte are too sadly adept. But to continue: Spain has failed in its payments for nearly a year, and the French treasury has suffered. There are rumours of bankruptcy, and of an Emperor grown desperate at the cost of power.”

“We have heard those rumours,” I told him.

“Spain offered this year's treasure fleet in payment of its debt. But you may recall, Miss Austen, that we are presently at war with Spain; and that only last summer, a Royal Navy squadron was so daring as to seize the annual shipment from the Americas, to general lamentation in Cadiz. Spain could not sustain such a loss again. The very stability of the Spanish crown must depend upon its fulfillment of Buonaparte's demands.”

“Yes, yes,” I returned impatiendy. “But what of Mr. Grey?”

“The Spanish crown approached our Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt. They informed him of the difficulties they faced on every side. They spoke of complicated arrangements. They looked for expressions of good faith. The Government could hardly extend an obvious hand of assistance—no more than it should do on behalf of France. But Mr. Pitt believed that an accommodation might be found.”

“That being?” Neddie enquired. His voice was as taut as a bowstring.

“The result of these delicate negotiations has been that the Spanish treasure was to be transported this year in English vessels commissioned in the Royal Navy.
3
The money was to be received in Amsterdam, by the House of Hope, which undertook to extend a loan to the French government. Mr. Grey's part in all of this, was to indemnify the British ships, in the event of a loss at sea. A minor role, but a necessary one.”

“The House of Hope has recently refused its loan,” I broke in, puzzled. “You told me yourself that Lord Harold was sent to Amsterdam, as Mr. Pitt's envoy. Has the entire matter gone awry?”