Jane and the Stillroom Maid (6 page)

Cassandra sent me a look of mute enquiry. I lifted my shoulders a fraction in dismay. My mother continued to talk of her late husband—of students long absent from our lives, and the disproportionate fortunes of their patrons—of her youth in Oxford, and her uncle Theophilus Leigh, the Master of Balliol College, who was renowned for his wit. When at length she had drawn breath to repeat one of the Master’s most cherished aphorisms, I hastily intervened.

“Was the Coroner able to put a name to that unfortunate young man, Cousin?”

“Eh?” Mr. Cooper came to his senses with a start. “What young man?”

“The one I discovered murdered this morning,” I reminded him gently.

Cassandra’s expression of concern had deepened; her gaze was fixed anxiously on Mr. Cooper. She appeared ready to leap to his aid in the instant, should he fall into a swoon.

“I suppose there is no harm in relating the intelligence,” Mr. Cooper conceded heavily, “and, indeed, it will be on every tradesman’s lips by morning. I shudder to think what my esteemed and noble patron, Sir George Mumps, will say when he learns of the affair.”

We waited in some suspense.

His eyes came up to meet my own, with a look of profound confusion. “The corpse of Miller’s Dale was not that of a gentleman, Jane, but one who had borrowed a gentleman’s clothes.”

“An imposter?” I enquired. “The matter gains in interest.”

“And delicacy,” Mr. Cooper added. “For no one can
say what the poor girl was about, or who might have used her so foully.”

I stood up abruptly and thrust back my chair. “Would you tell me that the young man so savagely murdered this morning—”

“Was, in fact, a woman,” my cousin said.

26 August 1806, cont.
∼

“B
UT HOW EXTRAORDINARY
!” I
CRIED
. “C
AN SUCH A
thing be possible?”

“It can, Cousin, and it is,” Mr. Cooper replied gloomily. “Mr. Tivey discovered the truth directly he examined the corpse. There is no denying that a woman’s body is very unlike to a man’s, you know, and furthermore, he recognised the girl at once. She is Bakewell born and bred.”

“Indeed?” There had been elegance in her looks—that delicacy of feature, the cropped golden curls. She might well have been a gentleman’s daughter, abroad on some lark in the dead of night. That would explain the fancy-dress. “And did she belong to one of the estates in the neighbourhood?”

“To a place called Penfolds,” my cousin said, “some five miles distant. She was a stillroom maid.”

“A servant!”

“By the name of Tess Arnold.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the parlour door, concerned lest word of the girl’s unhappy end should travel
unbeknownst into the hallway; Sally might be hovering there, her ears grown large with the intelligence. I shut the door firmly and placed my back against it.

“Was Mr. Tivey able to determine when she was killed?”

My cousin’s eyes moved blankly to meet my own. “He thinks it possible that life was extinguished some hours before the body was discovered, but cannot tell exactly when. The maid probably met her end in the middle of the night.”

“Quite alone and far from home”—Cassandra shuddered—“where her cries for assistance must certainly go unheeded. How dreadful, to be sure!”

“You say that Penfolds is five miles from Bakewell, Cousin,” I said. “But how great a distance separates it from Miller’s Dale, and the place of the maid’s gruesome end?”

“Less than a mile, Sir James Villiers tells me. Sir James is in commission of the peace for Bakewell, and a very fine gentleman; he has known Charles Danforth from birth.”

“Mr. Danforth, I conclude, is the owner of Penfolds?”

“And a man of very easy circumstances—a clear ten thousand a year. The Danforth family is an ancient one in Derbyshire, and boasts a considerable reputation and influence; Sir James assures me that they are everywhere esteemed and valued.” The respectability of the Penfolds family appeared of some importance to my cousin, as though it might blot out the savagery of their dependant’s murder.

“I knew a Danforth once,” my mother offered, “but he was killed at sea in the year ’sixty-nine. They carried his body in the hold of his ship for six weeks together, pickled in a hogshead of rum, so that his wife might have the burying of him. Unsavoury business. I cannot think that any wife should wish to see her husband so thoroughly disguised in drink.”

“But how came this young woman to be from home
so late at night?” Cassandra enquired. “And attired as a man?”

“And whose,” I added, “were the clothes? It must be tolerably difficult for a serving girl to obtain the articles of a gentleman.”

“Unless she were intimate with the Penfolds laundress,” my mother observed—a point not without its merits.

“One does not wish to speak ill of the dead—particularly when death was achieved in so hideous a manner,” Cassandra began hesitantly. “One does not like to place an unpleasant construction on events—”

“But clearly duplicity was the maid’s object. You may speak freely, Cassandra; your words cannot harm Tess Arnold now.”

“I fear I cannot agree, Jane,” objected Mr. Cooper. “It is not for us to canvass the matter of the girl’s death. It is an affair for the Justice.”

Impossible for my cousin to comprehend the restless agitation that had held me in its grip throughout the morning; or the feverish activity of my intellect, in its effort to make sense of so much brutality. He could not be expected to apprehend that having seen the blood on the rock, I must be
doing
something to rid myself of nightmare. Such behaviour in a lady was beyond Mr. Cooper’s experience, and, indeed, beyond what he might consider the bounds of decorum. But I would not submit willingly to nightmare for anyone.

I took a turn before the unlit grate and came to a halt at my cousin’s chair. “Did Mr. Tivey offer his opinion of the girl? Or any views that might throw some light on this dreadful business?”

Mr. Cooper drew a laboured breath, and failed to meet my eyes. “Tivey is the sort who would consign his own mother to the Devil, Jane,” he said with surprising vehemence, “and I would not give a farthing for his opinion of anybody.”

S
IR
J
AMES
V
ILLIERS, HOWEVER, WAS ANOTHER KETTLE
of fish—as my mother, in an angling spirit, might have been disposed to say. Sir James appeared in The Rutland Arms at so advanced an hour of the evening, however, that my mother was long since gone to bed, and Cassandra hard on her heels; only my cousin and I kept vigil with the lamps. Though the subject went un-broached between us, I rather fancy that neither of us was in haste to shut his eyes that evening, being uncertain what visions of horror might descend.

Mr. Cooper was bent over his travelling desk, composing a letter to his wife or perhaps a sermon on the day’s events—a natural expression of relief after so trying a period. I was engrossed in a slim volume of George Crabbe’s, discovered on a shelf in a corner of our parlour—a book of verse, unknown to me before, entitled
The Village
. Its tone was so like to a bitter wind that blights the first faint flowers of spring, that I quite admired the poet. He might have captured my very spirit of trouble and melancholy. I had just concluded the passage that begins “amid such pleasing scenes I trace/the poor laborious natives of the place,” when Sally announced Sir James.

He was not a tall man; but his figure was so elegantly spare, and so swooningly attired, that he might have been the lengthiest reed, a veritable whip of a fellow. He slid lithely into the room and bowed low over my hand before I had even thought to make my curtsey—before, indeed, my cousin Mr. Cooper had gained his feet. In another instant, Sir James had sent the serving girl for a bottle of Madeira—had made himself comfortable in our parlour—and was conversing so cordially with Mr. Cooper and myself that we might all have been acquainted this last age.

Sir James’s fair hair was artfully curled over his forehead
à la Titus
and the leathers of his Hussar boots gleamed. I observed the cut of his dark blue pantaloons, the narrow shoulders of his olive coat, and the remarkable extravagance of his necktie—and knew myself in the presence of a Pink of the
ton
, a Sprig of Fashion, a True Corinthian. My brother Henry had long ago taught me the mark of such a man.

“Have you lived long in Derbyshire, Sir James?” I enquired as Sally reappeared with his wine.

“All my life,” he replied. “I was born and raised at Villiers Hall, and absent a few years of schooling and a Season or two in London, have been happy to call it home. I am the fourth Villiers to bear the title of baronet, and the second to serve as Justice for Bakewell.”

“And does your commission generally give you so much trouble?”

He grinned—an easy, languorous expression not unlike a hound’s. “There has not been a serious offence in the vicinity for years, Miss Austen. The duties of Justice are more honoured in the breach than the observance. We may account Tess Arnold’s murder the result of an extraordinary run of bad luck.”

“Have there been other incidents, then, predating this murder?”

“Not in Bakewell itself,” Sir James replied. “But the owner of Penfolds Hall—Mr. Charles Danforth—has suffered grievous misfortune in recent months. He has lost no less than four children, the last a stillborn son. His wife passed away a fortnight after her lying-in.”

“It is a wonder the people of Bakewell do not believe him cursed,” I murmured.

“Ah—but they do! And the maid’s murder will be taken as further proof of it.” Sir James looked to my cousin. “It is a most distressing business, whatever the cause. It seems your passion for angling, Mr. Cooper, has placed us all at the center of a maelstrom. What have you to say for yourself?”

Mr. Cooper opened and shut his mouth without a word escaping him. It was fortunate, I thought, that no hymn sprang forth.

“A maelstrom,” I repeated. “Has news of the girl’s murder spread so quickly?”

“Recollect that it was market day, and all the countryside gathered in town,” Sir James replied. “If there is a resident within twenty miles of Bakewell yet in ignorance of the events, I should be greatly surprised.”

“Is Mr. Tivey so little to be trusted?”

Sir James hesitated. “Michael Tivey is well enough in his way—a good surgeon, and a better blacksmith—but he is also a native of this country, reared in all the superstition and ignorance for which these hills are known.”

“And what does superstition argue, Sir James?” I enquired.

“Tivey would have it the girl was killed in sacrifice—that she was butchered like a spring lamb to appease a vengeful god. He is crying out in every publican’s house against the heretics who walk among us—against infidels, and idolators, and destroyers of respectable faith. In short, Tivey would have it that Tess Arnold was murdered by Freemasons.”

“Freemasons!” I cried. And was bereft of further speech.

A Freemasons’ lodge is so much a part of life in a country village—a gathering place for local gentlemen, and a focus for their benevolent works—that it might rival the Church in sanctity. Indeed, not a few of the most distinguished clerics in the Church of England espouse the Brotherhood’s Christian principles; to be a politician is almost synonymous with membership; the Prince of Wales has lent the order an air of Fashion; and advancement in the world of the professions, whether in London or the counties, might well turn upon the influence of one’s fellow Masons. In short, the lodge
is the most powerful of gentlemen’s clubs—than which, in England, little else is
more
powerful. The idea of a surgeon-blacksmith inciting public opinion against such a creditable institution strained the bounds of belief.