Jane and the Wandering Eye (27 page)

“But you must, my dear,” Lady Desdemona said gently. “For it is no more than the truth. Whatever we each might have chosen to hope regarding the respective parties, I for one refuse to continue in ignorance.”

He was silent a moment, and his sister glanced at me uneasily.

“Kinny,” she said, “was it
this
that caused your words with Mr. Portal? Did he expose Miss Conyngham’s character to you that wretched night?”

“It matters nothing, now.”

“It matters a very great deal, indeed. I have only one brother, and I will not part with him for the sake of such a jade, for any inducement in the world!” Lady Desdemona cried stoutly. “You know something, I am sure of it.”

“Did you chance to observe the lady on your passage to the anteroom—while her brother was declaiming
Macbeth?”
I enquired.

The Marquis’s answer was drowned in the clamour of knocking at his door. “Time, my lady!” called Constable Shaw.

Lady Desdemona looked about her wildly. “Tell us, Kinny, I beg! Your life may depend upon it!”

“Very well,” he said, with infinite weariness; “I now no longer care what happens to myself. I did not observe Maria Conyngham, nor Swithin either. If he killed Portal and availed himself of the passage, however, it must have been at Miss Conyngham’s urging—for she knew of the passage’s existence, where Swithin could not. You will remember, Mona, how often the Conynghams dined in Laura Place, in the weeks before Her Grace’s rout; and any might observe the servants to pass from drawing-room to kitchen, by way of the anteroom passage.”

“That is no more than the truth,” his sister thoughtfully replied.

“But there is something, Lord Kinsfell, that you know regarding the lady,” I said.

He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes devoid of hope. And then he nodded once. “It is a word only.”

“A word?”

“Maria,”
he said. “I heard it on Portal’s lips, in his final agony.”

W
E LEFT
L
ORD
K
INSFELL TO THE MOST MELANCHOLY
thoughts, and found Colonel Easton pacing in the central courtyard. He very kindly escorted us both to his phaeton, and enquired of our direction; and at Lady Desdemona’s declaring herself faint from hunger, agreed to set us down in Milsom Street, for the procuring of a nuncheon at Molland’s, the confectioners.
¹
There he was forced to part from us, being elsewhere engaged; but we assured him of our ability to walk the
remaining distance home in the strongest accents possible.

A little while later we were established on a pair of stools in the bow-front window, well-fortified with chocolate and macaroons.

“It would seem that Portal named his killer in his last moments,” I began. “We must inform Lord Harold without delay.”

“May I beg you to accompany me to Laura Place, Miss Austen, and dine there with us? For the morning is much advanced, and you cannot return home without first advising my uncle. I should feel the deprivation of your understanding most acutely, I vow, in attempting to make sense of our interview with Kinny. You will not desert me?”

Having reasons of my own for wishing to consult Lord Harold—a consultation already too-long deferred—I readily agreed.

“Then do you jot a little note for the instruction of your family, and I shall send one of Mrs. Molland’s messengers to Green Park Buildings,” Lady Desdemona suggested, with admirable efficiency.

The paper was brought, the note written, and the messenger despatched in a matter of moments. Mrs. Molland refreshed our cups, and we settled down to indulge in a thorough canvassing of Lord Kinsfell’s affairs.

“Poor Kinny,” Lady Desdemona observed. “I fear he is sadly overset by the revelation of his beloved’s true character.”

“Had you any notion of your brother’s regard for Miss Conyngham?” I enquired.

“No, indeed,” Lady Desdemona exclaimed. “You must comprehend, Miss Austen, that Kinny is beset by the attention of ladies wherever he goes—and thus I suppose I have grown used to his general air of indifference. He is considered a most eligible
parti
, because of his title
and Papa’s estates; and his personal address is not unpleasing. And though he has always been mad for the theatre, I had not understood that
one
among the multitude had particularly caught his eye.”

“Perhaps he found a value in discretion.”

“Rather than risk Papa’s disapproval, you would mean? I should not be greatly surprised. But I must reproach myself for failing to detect the change in his behaviour. For Kinny would never have been so ready to come to Bath upon Papa’s errand, or so little desirous of dragging me back again to London, had Miss Conyngham not been in residence here. He abhors the stupidity of Bath above all things.”

“A man of taste and elegance, I see. Does his acquaintance with the lady, then, predate this visit to Bath?”

“He came down last Easter to stay with Grandmère, and may have met Miss Conyngham then. I must suppose Mr. Portal to have thrown her in his way—for Portal was an intimate of long standing in Laura Place. But what I cannot comprehend, is
why
Miss Conyngham should wish to murder Mr. Portal. I always believed them united by the strongest ties of affection.”

“Perhaps she misconstrued his attentions to yourself,” I offered gently. “The theatre alone can give an hundred examples of jealousy inciting a murderous rage.”

“But it is too absurd!” my companion cried. “I cared nothing for the fellow!”

“—Though you may have encouraged him, from a desire to pique the Earl of Swithin.”

Lady Desdemona flushed hotly. “Perhaps I may—perhaps I did. I have never regretted a similar indiscretion so intensely in my life, Miss Austen. For if either Swithin or Miss Conyngham was driven to violence by the appearance of my regard for Mr. Portal, I shall never forgive myself.”

We were silent a moment, and toyed with our macaroons.
I considered my nightmares of early morning, in some confusion and vexadon. Jealousy of Lady Desdemona—from either the Earl or Maria Conyngham—could not hope to explain the haunting pendant eye Lord Kinsfell had found on Richard Portal’s breast. “Do not reproach yourself excessively, Lady Desdemona,” I said at last. “I would warrant that the Earl—if indeed it was his hand that struck the blow—acted as much at Miss Conyngham’s behest, as from a desire to despatch his rival.”

She smiled faintly. “There is very little of comfort in
that
reflection, however. I cannot rejoice in the suspicion of Swithin’s attachment to another.”

I studied her narrowly. “You regret the Earl’s defection, then?”

“I cannot help but do so. The sensation is nothing, however, to my horror at his lordship’s being suspected of murder. The torments of the past few days, Miss Austen, have been extreme. You cannot have the slightest notion; for revolve the matter in solitude as I might, I can arrive at no very satisfactory conclusion. Lord Swithin is either a murderer, a deceiver, or both; and the knowledge can only give me pain.”

“Then why, when he was eager to marry, did you refuse his proposals?”

Her countenance clouded. “Mamma does not admire him, on account of his being so much in the way of the Carlton House set. They are very fast, you know, as is everything to do with the Prince, and spend a vast deal of money; and Mamma suspects that Swithin sought me for my fifty thousand pounds.”

I silently blessed Desdemona’s Mamma; and concluded that the Duchess of Wilborough was less empty-headed than I had thought her.

“But Papa saw nothing wrong in Swithin—and said that with so vast a fortune at his command, mine should
be the merest pin money. He was almost gratified, in fact, that I should have attracted the suit of a man who has spurned nearly every woman in London.”

“The Earl is much sought-after?”

“Oh, Miss Austen—I have observed such doings in Town, as should curl your hair! Such barefaced flattery, and complaisant simpering, and obnoxious efforts to please! There are ladies who go about in nothing but puce, because they believe it to be his favourite colour—though I know he quite abhors it, and laughs at them all the while. And there are others who embroider his device upon their sleeves—” She stopped short, her eyes widening. “Oh, good Lord!”

I seized her hand. “Like Mrs. Fitzherbert, who carved the Prince’s feathers in the lintel of her door in Richmond Hill.
²
The tiger! Of course!”

“A gift to a lady, and not his own.”

“The
Maria
Portal named with his dying breath! Why did we not perceive it before?”

“And so it was Miss
Conyngham
who killed Portal, and fled through the anteroom passageway, and lost the tiger unbeknownst to herself,” Lady Desdemona whispered breathlessly. “Oh, my dearest Miss Austen—we must away to my uncle.”

We threw some coin on Molland’s counter, called hastily for chairs, and were gone.

D
INNER WAS EXCESSIVELY GRAND, AND
I
FELT MY WANT OF
evening dress acutely; but the Dowager kindly assured
me that a trifling affair of two courses, comprising some twenty dishes, should never incommode so dear a friend as myself. Lord Harold presided at one end of the long table, his mother at the other, with myself and Lady Desdemona ranged in between; Miss Wren’s earlier presentiment of ill-health having been realised with a most tiresome cold in the head, she kept to her rooms and requested a little warm gruel on a tray, and a hot mustard bath for her feet.

Her Grace was suffered to offer an apology, at presenting so excessively stupid a table for my amusement. Before Lord Kinsfell’s misfortune, they had been wont to see some thirty guests in Laura Place at dinner; but a festive mood was wisely deemed unsuitable at such a time, and the Dowager had desisted in entertainment.

Lord Harold had greeted me with a bow, and a countenance devoid of expression; no mention was made of the offending item in that morning’s
Chronicle;
and I blessed the elegance of manner that allowed the preservation of my composure. The Gentleman Rogue is too accustomed to impertinence from a public quarter, to dignify it with outrage; whereas among the Austens, such notice is so unusual as to be met with dismay on every side.

Her Grace enquired anxiously after Lord Kinsfell, and Lady Desdemona was able to give a tolerable report of his spirits; but before the servants, some four of which remained in an attitude of readiness behind our respective chairs, she was loath to mention the interesting intelligence our visit to the gaol had elicited. In thus longing for the relative privacy of the drawing-room, we were encouraged to make short work of the sole, the pheasant, and the venison. But an hour and a half of steady application to the Dowager’s table, in fact, was required before I was released to the comforts of tea and feminine society.

When Lord Harold had done at last with the duty of his solitary Port, and appeared in the drawing-room reeking of tobacco, Lady Desdemona fairly leapt to his side. In a breathless accent, she related the whole of our morning’s endeavours.

Her uncle listened, and looked grave. “My errand in Orchard Street gains in urgency. I had intended the Theatre Royal this evening—both the Conynghams are to play—and now I believe I must hasten there without delay. It is unfortunate that Mr. Elliot bore the interesting pin away with him to London; for I might have made an addition to my attire, and displayed the tiger on the collar of my coat. It should never have excited too great a notice in general; but in one quarter, at least, it might have moved the guilty to betrayal.”

“But you do agree, Uncle, that it is possible Swithin had nothing to do with Mr. Portal’s end?” Lady Desdemona persisted.

He gazed at her an instant before replying. “I hesitate to declare Swithin innocent of anything, my dear, until our excellent Mr. Elliot has returned from London.”

“We need not await the magistrate’s intelligence on one point, at least,” I broke in, with an anxious look for Lady Desdemona. “For Lord Swithin’s sisters acknowledged only this morning that the Earl had business so near to Bath as
Bristol
the very morning after Mr. Portal’s murder. Certainly it was from Bristol that his lordship sent for the Fortescue ladies, before journeying to Bath himself on Wednesday. They joined him here on Thursday, I believe.”

“Did they, indeed? This is news of the first water.” Lord Harold considered my words a moment, then wheeled to confront his niece. “Would it comfort you, Mona, to know that Swithin was in the clear?”

“It would,” she replied, with downcast eyes.

“Though in all probability Miss Conyngham wore his
device—in the most public admission of his patronage? You persist in valuing a man of so dissipated a character?”

His voice had grown quite stern, and Lady Desdemona quailed; but it was the Dowager who replied.

“Leave her be, Harry,” she said with a wave, “you need not fear she is abandoned to the reprobate. She merely hopes he is not entirely so past recall, as to have murdered Mr. Portal. There is nothing very singular in this.”

“Very well, Mamma. If we must consider Desdemona’s heart, I can see no alternative but to adventure Bristol on the morrow. There are only two inns I can conceive of Swithin gracing; and at one of these, he will be remembered. And now I must away, or Miss Conyngham will play without my admiration. Miss Austen? May I set you down in Seymour Street?”

“You may, my lord, with my deepest thanks.”

I made my
adieux
, and was very soon established in Lord Harold’s curricle.

“Y
OU ARE RATHER QUIET THIS EVENING
, M
ISS
A
USTEN.
I hope my niece has not overtaxed your fund of strength.”

“Hardly—though I am, perhaps, a little oppressed in spirits.”

A swift glance, as swiftly averted. “I very much regret the impertinence of the newspaper, Jane.”

The gentleness of his tone, and his adoption of my Christian name, very nearly brought tears to my eyes—but I drew a shaky breath and attempted to affect a carelessness I could not feel.