Jane and the Stillroom Maid (30 page)

“May God have mercy on your soul, Michael Tivey,” the Justice muttered; and turned away in revulsion.

W
E LEARNED LITTLE MORE FROM THE SURGEON AFTER
that, though we pressed him closely for particulars of all he had taught Tess Arnold. A formidable character emerged from Michael Tivey’s words: intent upon her skill, with the toughness of a man twice her years; ruthless in pursuit of knowledge, and possessed of a heart of stone. Tess Arnold, I judged, should use any tool that fortune placed within her power, whether the tool possessed a soul or no; but perhaps it was her unswerving passion that had proved her downfall.

“We must have, at least, the names of those they anatomised,” Sir James said in a voice full low. “Did their families learn of the violation in the churchyard, any form of violence might well result. The most respectable of folk might well find it in their hearts to murder with such a cause—and to visit upon the maid’s corpse, the very savagery that their own Deceased had suffered at her hands.”

I nodded, and studied Michael Tivey’s crestfallen countenance. Sir James should be left to secure this final intelligence; it was he who must pursue the bereaved families, and visit further anguish upon those already torn with loss. Tivey looked, to me, to have divulged the worst part of his guilty knowledge; he huddled now, drained of all emotion, on his hard wooden stool.

The great bell of All Saints tolled the hour of five o’clock. The kitchen maids were hovering beyond the door; the innkeeper’s dinner should be decidedly behind-hand. I informed Sir James of my engagement for the evening, received his ardent thanks on the room’s threshold, and fled without a backwards glance.

Though murder will out, and the guilty must pay, I sometimes fear the turn of my own understanding. I had possessed not an idea of Tivey’s secret when first I undertook to persuade; but the apprehension of all that he had done arose in my mind as swift and sure as a passage of vows between two lovers, such as I might pen on paper with my own hand. It was extraordinary—by any construction, extraordinary; and I knew, as I sped towards my bedchamber and Cassandra’s grey silk, that I should not rid myself of the horror of Tivey’s confession for many nights to come.

A
T SIX O’CLOCK
I
ONCE MORE DESCENDED THE FRONT
stairs, a woman transformed in her outer garb, however shaken she remained within. I found myself already expected—Dawson the coachman stood correct by the door of an elegant crane-necked coach. And so, in borrowed combs and a gown rather breathless through the bodice, I set off for Chatsworth House. Being absolved of the burden of conversation on this second journey along the Baslow road, I had leisure to think; but such thoughts as must come ensured a violent headache. Better to banish reason, and peer instead through the closed carriage’s octagonal side-lights—to admire the verdant folds of Manners Wood, the stone enclosures of the fields, the long rays of sun gilding the saddles of the hills. I found that I should be sad to leave Derbyshire on the Monday. It was a landscape that beguiled without intending—a harsh and lovely fall of ground that inspired passion, but cared nothing for those who would claim it. One might be suffered to
pass unscathed through the Peaks, but one could never claim to own them, whatever the Devonshires might say.

The country was not unlike the character of those it bred. I considered Tess Arnold—a girl grown more inscrutable, the more I learned of her. We knew, now,
why
she had worn a man’s clothes on the night of her murder, but not why she had been killed. Had some grieving person, entirely unknown to us—whose late wife, or dead child, or long-suffering parent she had torn from an open grave—taken up his gun, and despatched her as brutally as she had served his kin? Then why leave Michael Tivey at liberty, to plunder graves anew?

And what, exactly, had been the maid’s relations with Andrew Danforth? Had she loved him—or merely used him to obtain her borrowed feathers? The state of undress Mrs. Haskell had observed in the privacy of the ice-house, might have been nothing more than an opportunity seized for the exchange of a maid’s habit for that of a gentleman; seduction might have been the farthest thing from Tess Arnold’s mind.

The carriage jolted over a dry rut in the road, and I clutched at the edge of my seat. Reveries about unknown persons, and their possible grievances, were all very well in their way; they might serve quite admirably to divert Sir James Villiers’s attention from the man who now sat in the Bakewell gaol. But the story, to my way of thinking, would not do. Had Tess been despatched by an outraged mourner, in revenge for crimes of anatomisation, why then should George Hemming confess to murder? All Michael Tivey’s talk of churchyards and suicide threw not the slightest light on Hemming’s anguish. I shook my head. Whatever Tess Arnold had intended in her gentleman’s clothes on Monday night, it had played no part in her death.

I
T WAS AS WE APPROACHED
P
ILSLEY, AND THE TURNING
in our road for Chatsworth, that I espied the lone horseman. He had pulled up his mount on a little rise above, and was staring keenly down at my equipage as it approached the western gates of the park. Both horse and rider were utterly still, their figures suggesting the statue rather than life; and something chilling there was in so undisguised, and so acute, a scrutiny. Indiscernible myself behind the shutters of my coach, I stared implacably back. Only one person in Derbyshire was plunged in so profound a mourning; and only one bore that air of grief, even in stillness. The Marquess of Hartington, Devonshire’s heir.

But why was he not already at home, and dressing for his sister’s dinner?

He wheeled the horse’s head—raised one arm—a whip flashed out, and as swift as a bird in flight, the boy and his mount had put Chatsworth to their backs. I watched, until a turning in the road swept them both from my sight; and knew that it was the last glimpse of the Marquess I should have, that evening.

30 August 1806, cont.
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T
HE PROSPECT OF A FINE MEAL AMIDST ELEGANT COMPANY
must give rise to the most pleasurable anticipation in the dullest of times; but when set in the frame of recent events, and coupled with the knowledge that one or more of my companions might be guilty of murder—it gains considerably in piquancy.

I had occasion to reflect upon this when Mr. Charles Danforth vied with his brother for the honour of taking Lady Harriot Cavendish into dinner, only to be supplanted—as must be natural—by Lord Harold Trowbridge, his senior in both years and consequence. Lord Harold preserved his command of countenance, and Mr. Charles was too well-bred to cavil. He turned instead to the Countess of Swithin, our dear Desdemona, who accepted his arm with alacrity and the greatest good-humour in the world. Mr. Andrew Danforth was consigned to me—the eldest, least attractive, and most impoverished of the lot. But such is the fate of younger sons. He bore his duty well, and was so obliging in his manner, that I nearly forgave him the role of chief
suspect in a heinous crime. Mr. Andrew’s attentions drew Lord Harold’s eye so often during the course of dinner, in fact, that I felt myself in the slightest measure repaid for his lordship’s own excessive devotion to Lady Harriot.

We were twelve at table—I had not looked for so great a crowd with the family in mourning, but Lady Harriot’s native day had drawn nearly every relation to her. Georgiana Morpeth, Lady Harriot’s elder sister, sat to her father’s left. Lord Morpeth had brought his wife down from their home at Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, and intended to return thence on the Monday—Lady Morpeth’s three little children being constantly in want of her. The Countess of Bessborough, younger sister to the late Duchess of Devonshire, was but lately arrived from her home at Roehampton;
she
intended a stay at Chatsworth of some weeks.

Lady Bessborough is a bewitching woman, with Hary-O’s rapier wit and a faded beauty that is nonetheless enchanting. Here was the mold from which Hary-O had been struck; and I should not be greatly surprised to learn that Lord Harold had once been as enslaved to the charms of
this
Harriot as he was now thoroughly devoted to her niece. Though she was a Countess (and the Earl yet lived), the burdens of public rectitude had never weighed overly-heavy on Lady Bessborough’s white shoulders; she had brought an excessively handsome young man, Granville Leveson-Gower, in her train from Roehampton. All at the Chatsworth dining table acknowledged him as her lover, despite the twelve-year difference in their ages; and as Leveson-Gower might command a fortune, and the notice of any woman in the world, we may adjudge his attachment a tribute to Lady Bessborough’s fascination.

The Duke sat at the head of the great dining table, but the chair to his right—the late Duchess’s place—was draped with black crepe. Lady Elizabeth, I saw with some relief, had not yet attempted to seize her dear
friend’s empty chair. One other seat had gone unfilled, as though reluctant to disturb the symmetry of our arrangement: the Marquess of Harrington’s. The boy had not appeared at dinner; and I was not alone in remarking upon the absence.

“Where has young Hart hid himself, Your Grace?” Lord Morpeth cried to his father-in-law, when the first congratulations and wishes for returns of the day had been offered to Lady Harriot. “I should not have thought he would neglect his sister on so signal an occasion.”

“No doubt he’ll turn up,” the Duke returned vaguely. “Always out until all hours. Can’t drag the fellow off his mounts. Sportsman. Think he sleeps in his riding breeches.”

“Did Hart know of the excessive anxiety he causes,” managed Lady Elizabeth, “I am certain he would make amends, dear Morpeth; but he is of an age where the claims of Society are as nothing. The boy is heedless, foolhardy, and given over to the very worst sorts of humours—but possessed, I am sure, of the dearest heart in the world! There is nothing to his grief for our beloved Georgiana. Indeed, as I said to Lady Bessborough only this morning, I must forgive Hart every unfeeling wound when I consider of the depth of his loss.”

“You are too good to us all, I am sure, Lady E.,” retorted Hary-O, with barely suppressed rage. “What my brother might be, without your influence in this household, does not bear thinking of.”

Granville Leveson-Gower regarded Lady Harriot narrowly—he was seated immediately to her left—then looked all his enquiry at Lady Bessborough directly opposite. The Countess gave a barely discernible shake of the head, and reached for her wineglass. Leveson-Gower sat back, his eyes yet fixed on Hary-O. There was curiosity in his gaze, I thought—but anxiety, too, for her welfare.

“And has grief entirely blasted your twenty-first summer, Lady Harriot?” he asked her gently.

She fixed her eyes upon her lap as she replied; but a warmth suffused her countenance. “It should be very strange, sir, had it not. Though I do not make a parade of sorrow, as
some
do, I must feel my mother’s loss as deeply.”

“I’m sure you must,” he returned. “No more excellent lady lived. And the continued torments of Chatsworth—the thousand unquiet memories of happiness, now gone forever!—must deepen your pain. Lady Bessborough, I think, intends to carry you back with us to London; and there, I am sure, the diversions of Town, and the novelties of a new Season, must invariably raise your spirits.”