Jane and the Stillroom Maid (33 page)

Mr. Danforth did not choose to remark her dislike; he obligingly turned over some sheets of music, and settled them before the fair performer; she commenced to play, with an infinitely superior taste than I should ever manage. Her voice was a little less equal to her fingering; but Mr. Danforth’s being strong and rich, the effect was charming. I resolved at once to cede all display to Lady Harriot, and heard her with pleasure.

Two
songs were thus suffered to fall away, in rapt attention from myself and Desdemona, when an interval occurred in which Mr. Danforth must find a particular song—one he had attempted before in Lady Harriot’s hearing—one he would not be satisfied without attempting again—and the lady’s fingers fell silent.

“He will be searching out a tender embarrassment,”
Desdemona confided in a lowered tone, “and I declare I shall be sick. A diversion, I think, is necessary.” And raising her voice slightly she said, “I make it the third night this week, Hary-O, that Hart has disappeared without a word. Perhaps he is gone a-trysting, and is ashamed to acknowledge it! We may declare that the result of Mr. Danforth’s example.”

“I suspect that young Hart is poaching,” Danforth declared from his place among the sheet-music; “it is the preferred entanglement of every country youth. He will be presently crouching in the underbrush of the Vernon grounds, in the company of a most disgraceful companion, intent upon the snaring of a brace of rabbits.”

“Is it quite safe for such a young fellow to be abroad, when murder has been done?” I enquired, with an air of idle curiosity. “But perhaps he confines himself to the park, and writes poetry in the Grotto.”

“Poetry! Hart?” Lady Harriot managed an expression of unaffected amusement; it softened the unyielding structure of her face, and made her appear suddenly more amiable. “It is meaning no disrespect to say that poor Hart is possessed of a tin ear. It is much to elicit two words from him, indeed; but on paper, he is an utter blank!”

“How very sad!” Desdemona cried. “It has been my experience that those young men who cannot pronounce a word, are the most eloquent hands at a love letter! Your easy and arrogant fellows, who may spout off an entire volume, have no time to waste in putting words to paper. I do not think I possess a single
billet-doux
in Swithin’s fist, however ardent his vows by moonlight.”

“Whoever murdered poor Tess is unlikely to concern himself with the heir to a dukedom,” Danforth added, for my ears. “The Marquess must enjoy such protection, by virtue of his birth and his manhood, as a stillroom maid could never know.”

“I will confess that I worry about Hart,” Lady Harriot murmured. Her long fingers spasmed slightly where they sat idle in her lap; she clutched them together, ever the mistress of control. “When I learned that murder had been done so recently as Monday night, my thoughts flew immediately to my brother. He was abroad until dawn.”

I stared at Lady Harriot, my breath suspended. Surely she must apprehend the cruel force of such a speech?

“He should
not
be allowed to wander alone,” she went on, in a fretful tone. “It would never have been permitted in my mother’s time. He should be forced to keep a groom at his heels—”

“I cannot think that Hart would thank you for your concern,” Danforth told her lightly. “No lad of fifteen wishes to be followed by a nursemaid.”

“If Lord Hartington
was
abroad on Monday night, how thankful you must have been to discover him safe—when first you learned of Tess Arnold’s death,” I added. “In so vast a house as this, I imagine it must be possible for a legion to come and go unnoticed.”

“I should never know if Hart had found his bed or slept in the stables,” Lady Harriot confirmed. “Fifteen is such a trying age! I will not scruple to admit that the boy has run completely wild this summer, Miss Austen.”

“Perhaps when he has got over the worst of his grief,” I suggested delicately, “you may observe a change. Perhaps if he were sent away to school—”

“Now
that
is a remedy I cannot hear of, without the most strenuous objection in the world,” Andrew Danforth declared with heat. “Whoever first conceived of an exile among schoolboys, far from the comforts of all that is familiar, as a remedy for grief, can never have known what beasts young boys may be.”

“You speak with all the force of experience, Mr. Danforth.”

“I do. My brother, Charles, saw fit to send me to
Winchester, when my parents died; and it was many years before I could forgive his interference.”

“And yet,” I persisted, “a man must receive an education.”

“But why he must be educated at so great a distance from his home—alien to everything that must have a claim on his heart—is something I will never understand,” he replied, with less of anger than he had previously shown. “When I reflect that a woman may be schooled in her own attics, by the comfort of a fire, at the hands of domestics she has known all her life—I might almost exchange my Hessians for stays, Miss Austen!”

We all laughed; but Mona could not allow the argument to rest in Danforth’s hands. “It will not do, Mr. Danforth—you know that it will not do. The chief purpose in attending a school such as you describe, is not to be found in the Latin or Greek that is beaten into your head; but in the acquaintance one forms and the relations of friendship or reliance that may extend a lifetime. Hart must certainly benefit from
these
.”

“Tell me, Mr. Danforth,” I enquired, “did you regret your exile to Winchester so deeply, once you had been there the length of a term?”

“I hated it without qualification or exception for the whole three months I endured,” he retorted. “Had poor old Hemming not appeared as my saviour, I should hate it still.”

“Hemming?—Not Mr. George Hemming?”

“Naturally. Whom else should I mean? It was always Hemming Charles employed whenever anything distasteful had to be faced; and rather than come in search of me himself, and answer to the Headmaster, he sent his solicitor in his stead.”

“I see.” His solicitor, it would seem, was yet serving in that capacity; and having faced a Headmaster of Winchester, and stood his ground, perhaps George
Hemming could find nothing very awful in the gallows after all.

“But I was forgetting,” Danforth continued. “You are a little acquainted with Mr. Hemming, I think, Miss Austen.”

“I was in his company on the day I found Tess Arnold,” I told him starkly, “and still cannot credit that Mr. Hemming is languishing in Bakewell gaol, on a charge of murder.”

“Not because of the maid?” Lady Harriot cried. Her isolation within the grounds of Chatsworth, it seemed, had extended so far as a complete ignorance of events that had animated all Derbyshire. “But why should he have done her any harm?”

“Even now, I cannot support the idea,” Danforth said. “It is in every respect impossible.”

“Because Mr. Hemming has been your saviour?” enquired Desdemona with interest, “or because you regard his character as incapable of violence? I merely ask as a student of human nature, and one who has witnessed murder done before. In this, you may observe the foundation of my friendship for Miss Austen.”

“When the maid’s body was first discovered, and believed to be that of a young gentleman,” I said, “George Hemming was astonished to find a corpse above Miller’s Dale. On this basis alone I do not believe him when he claims to have shot Tess Arnold; and I shall never be convinced of his having mutilated her body.”

“My father has invited Mr. Hemming to dine in our company some once or twice,” Lady Harriot said. “He seemed an amiable and decent fellow. But I cannot profess to know him well; and how may any of us claim to know of what another is capable? I should not admit such knowledge of my dearest relations. Indeed, if my family is to serve as example—then we may safely state that each of us is capable of the greatest good, and the deepest harm, in the world.”

“Hemming sustained me through a most difficult period,” Danforth said with diffidence. “He has been a steady friend to all my family. But I cannot profess to know his conscience. I cannot profess to know my own, if it comes to that.”

“This is serious speaking, indeed!” Lady Swithin cried, with a satiric look for Lady Harriot; “if you may command half so much eloquence on behalf of slavery or taxation, Mr. Danforth, your success in Parliament is assured! But perhaps we cannot hope for so much. It is rare for our English gentleman to summon much love for matters of finance.”

“What reason do you find for Mr. Hemming to have murdered the maid?” I asked.

He shook his head with a fine expression of distaste. “I wonder that they were even acquainted! I am as amazed as all of Bakewell, Miss Austen.”

“And this is how steadiness is repaid!” observed Lady Swithin tartly. “If ever I stand in need of stout defence, Mr. Danforth, pray remind me not to look for it from your quarter.”

“I shall be only too happy to speak to Hemming’s excellent character at the Derby Assizes,” Danforth returned. “Unless it be that he enters a plea of guilt. That is certainly the course that Sir James believes he will adopt, for I have spoken with the Justice regarding the case. He has never seen a man so determined, he says, to assume responsibility for his crime. Hemming appears to having nothing further in view, than a swift judgement.”

Lady Harriot heaved a troubled sigh. “How dreadful, to have your good opinion of the man entirely overthrown! It is wretched, indeed, to feel that all one’s ideas of childhood—the happy innocence of one’s earliest associations—must be destroyed with age! The more I know of the world, the less I am pleased with it. There are few people I really love; and even fewer of whom I think well.”

“That is because you are formed for discernment,” Andrew Danforth told her gently. “You are made of such unblemished gold yourself, that all the rest of the world must appear as base, and tarnished.”

Lady Harriot closed her instrument with a gesture of impatience. “Pray do not toad-eat me this evening, Andrew! I have not the temper for it.”

“He is merely practising, Hary-O, for his career in politics.” Lady Swithin made this observation with amusement. “You must know, Mr. Danforth, that the road to greatness is paved with seduction. You must endeavour to be the toast of all the great ladies in the Whig establishment, for it is they who wield the true power! Their husbands merely effect it.”

The Countess’s tone was lighthearted; but I detected something of her uncle’s irony in its depths. The easy expression on Desdemona’s face must belie the cutting edge to her words. She was a subtle creature—a playful and charming girl, whose manners had always been captivating. But she was nonetheless a Trowbridge. And I saw, with an inner exulting, that she did not intend her friend Lady Harriot to throw herself away. However desperate the case of the Duke’s daughter—however miserable she might find herself in the prison of her home—Lady Swithin should ensure that she made a brilliant match. And Andrew Danforth was too ambitious—too insinuating in his ways—and too duplicitous for Mona’s taste.

He flushed under the silken lash of her words. “A head that is turned by mere flattery cannot be made for Influence. Allow me to believe, Countess, that your long familiarity with the Great has misled you—it has jaded you to bitterness. I may hope that when Lady Harriot comes into her reign—when she is the queen of the
ton
, as her mother was before her—that she will not be swayed by hypocrites. We who wish for nothing but her happiness, cannot consign her to so miserable a fate.”

“Hary-O may spot a hypocrite at thirty paces,” agreed Mona with relish, “having learned to despise them from her birth. I daresay you have been fortunate, Mr. Danforth, in the ease of your Derbyshire conquests; but London-bred ladies may prove a difficult case.”

“My Derbyshire conquests,” he repeated, with an air of puzzlement. “I cannot think what you would mean.”

Lady Harriot gathered her music with a petulant little slap, her countenance averted. “Let us have no more of this sparring, Mona. You both make my head ache.”

“I believe you dropped this, Mr. Danforth, in your haste to lead Lady Harriot from the dining parlour.” The Countess held out a small gold jeweller’s case with an air of offering a beggar tuppence. “The lady who presented it should never wish you to leave it on the carpet, disregarded.”

Mr. Danforth took the token from her and caressed it with his fingertips. “No,” he said slowly, “I am sure she would not.”

He snapped open the case and showed us what it held—a bit of ivory, two inches wide. The miniature of a lady, painted in watercolours.

“My late mother,” he said simply, and snapped the case closed. He left the music room without another word.

Desdemona stared after him, for once bereft of speech. There was an expression of calculation on her countenance, however, very like to what I had observed in Lord Harold. It was probable that the Countess of Swithin suspected her uncle’s attachment to her friend; and with the best heart in the world, would further his suit. Whatever knowledge he possessed of Andrew Danforth, Mona probably comprehended as well.

Except, it would seem, the most intriguing fact of all. That intelligence belonged to me alone. For I knew, now, why George Hemming languished in the Bakewell
gaol. The lady in Danforth’s portrait—with her golden hair, her high cheekbones, and her slanting eyes of green—was the selfsame one he kept close to his heart, the miniature let slip on the night of his confession. I had thought then that the portrait was his wife’s. I was wrong.