Jane and the Wandering Eye (5 page)

Chapter 2
Wilberforce Elliot Pays a Call

12 December 1804, cont.
~

T
HE UPROAR OF THE ASSEMBLED GUESTS WAS SWIFT AND
sudden. The Dowager Duchess of Wilborough screamed, the Knight was wrestled into a chair, and not a few of the guests made swiftly for the door—being disinclined, one supposes, to a meeting with the constables that evening, and all the tedium it should require.

For my part, I had not the slightest hesitation in remaining. The murder of the White Harlequin had rendered Lord Harold’s business irrelevant; but he should assuredly be summoned now from London, and my observation of all in the Wilborough household should be as gold. My thoughts were suddenly diverted, however, by Anne Lefroy’s seeking a chair, her pallor extreme. Madam can never rely upon a physical courage in the face of blood, and I feared she should faint.
Where
were Henry and Eliza? A swift glance for a tower of birds’ nests and ship models—and I waved my sister to my side.

“Do you look to Madam Lefroy,” I enjoined, “while I attend to the murder.”

“But of course.” Eliza was all efficiency. “Henry! A glass of water, if you please—or better yet, brandy! And quickly!”

I returned to the anteroom doorway, and there found the Knight in the midst of an outburst.

“But do observe the open window! I assure you, whoever committed this dreadful deed has jumped to the paving below! Quickly, Jenkins—to the street, or he shall escape us entirely!”

The man Jenkins hesitated, bewildered, and glanced to the Dowager Duchess.

“Go, go—and take Samuel with you!” she urged him. The footman dashed for the stairs.

The massive Moor, his face blackened with burnt cork and his turban formed of a lady’s cashmere shawl, pushed his way to the fore of the pitiful scene.

“My name is Gibbs,” he said, “and I have the honour to act as Her Grace’s physician. I must be permitted to examine the gentleman.”

“It is Mr. Richard Portal,” Maria Conyngham told the doctor. She was weeping still, but struggled for composure. “He is our company’s manager. Your physick will avail him nothing, however. The knife blade found his heart.”

“Hush now, Maria,” her brother said, and drew her to his bosom.

Dr. Gibbs dismissed the pair with a glance and bent to the unfortunate Portal. He felt of his wrists and neck, then laid an ear to the blood-soaked breast. And at last, with surprising gentleness, the physician removed the black velvet mask.

All evidence of the Harlequin’s former gaiety was fled. The expression of agonised horror that still gripped his countenance was distressing in the extreme. Richard Portal was revealed as a not unattractive gentleman, but well past his first youth; his brown hair was touched with
grey, and his complexion reddened by exposure or drink. Dr. Gibbs closed the staring eyes, and arranged the lifeless limbs in an attitude of dignity; and then he turned to look at the Dowager.

Eugenie was huddled on a blue and gold settee. Lady Desdemona stood at her side.

“A constable should be summoned, Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs said quietly. “Elliot, the magistrate, is to be preferred, of course—but at this hour—”

As though conjured by his words, a bronze clock on the mantel began to chime. It had just gone two.

“I did not kill him, Gibbs,” the Knight burst out, straining in his captors’ grip. “You must believe me! I did not do this thing!”

“Be quiet, Simon.” The Dowager Duchess’s voice was weary. “You must save your words for the magistrate, my dear.” Gripping the knobbed head of her cane, she rose a trifle unsteadily, patted Lady Desdemona’s hand, and progressed towards the doorway. Her gaze she kept studiously averted from the dead man on the carpet. The hushed crowd of guests parted like a tide to permit her passage, then closed again around her.

“Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs called after Eugenie in a commanding voice. “Your Grace, I must beg your indulgence. Would you have the body removed?”

The Duchess halted in her stride, but did not turn. “Leave him, Gibbs,” she replied. “Mr. Elliot will wish to view everything precisely as it was found. Later we may consider what is due to Mr. Portal—but for the nonce, I must summon the constables and despatch a letter to the magistrate’s residence. Are you acquainted with the direction?”

“I am, Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs replied. “Mr. Elliot resides in Rivers Street.”

“Very well. I shall write to him directly. But I must beg
that no one depart this house until the constable or Mr. Elliot arrive.”

The doors closed behind the Duchess—and that part of the assembled masquerade, that had not fled at the first instance of blood, commenced a dispirited milling about the drawing-room. I surveyed the ranks hastily, and could find no trace of Madam Lefroy’s acquaintance, the Red Harlequin, or of the bearded Pierrot who had conversed at such length with Maria Conyngham. Some fifty guests arrayed in motley nonetheless remained. Most eyes were careful to avoid the pathetic figure felled upon the exquisite carpet, or the group of actors despondent at its feet; and Dr. Gibbs was so good as to summon a footman, and request some bed linen, for the composure of the body.

“Jane.” Madam Lefroy raised a shaking hand to my arm. “I must leave this place at once. At once! I cannot bear the pall of death! I find in it a terrible presentiment!”

“More brandy, Henry,” Eliza said tersely, “and perhaps some smelling salts. Enquire of Lady Desdemona.”

My brother hastened away, and I knelt to Madam Lefroy.

“Dear friend,” I said softly, “you must rally, I fear. Indeed you must. For we none of us may quit the household until the constables have come. At the first opportunity, I assure you, we shall summon a chaise and attend you home.”

She closed her eyes and gripped my fingers painfully.

F
OR THE CONSTABLES’ ARRIVAL WAS REQUIRED PERHAPS A
quarter-hour, the streets being all but deserted at that time of night. At the approach to Laura Place, however, the party encountered some difficulty—the way being blocked by an assemblage of chairmen in attendance
upon the rout, and expectant of any amount of custom when it should be concluded. The news that a murder had occurred within, was incapable of deterring these hardy souls, who had braved a night of snow and considerable cold in pursuit of pence; and it was with a clamour of indignation, and the most vociferous protests, that they suffered the constables to clear them from the stoop.

I observed all this from the vantage of a drawing-room window, having grown intolerably weary of turning about the overheated room in attendance upon the Law. If Simon, Marquis of Kinsfell, was to be credited—for such, I had learned, was the Knight’s full title—then the chairmen must have observed the murderer in the act of leaping from the anteroom window. The prospect of that apartment gave out onto Laura Place, in company with the window at which I now stood. It should be a simple matter to question the fellows assembled below—

But I had only to entertain the thought, before it was superseded by another. Had the chairmen observed a figure to exit the Dowager’s window in considerable stealth, should not they have given chase? One had only to shout out “Thief!” in any street of the city, and a crowd of willing pursuers was sure to form, intent upon the rewards of capture. But no hue or cry had arisen from below—and thus a faint seed of doubt regarding Lord Kinsfell must form itself in my heart.

A sudden hush brought my gaze around from the window—the constables were arrived, two grizzled elders more accustomed to calling out the watch than attending a murder among the Quality—and with them, Mr. Wilberforce Elliot.

He was a large and shambling man, got up in a wine-coloured frock coat, much stained, and a soiled shirt. His neckcloth was barely equal to the corpulence of his neck, and in being forced into service, had so impeded the flow of air to his lungs, that his countenance was brilliantly
red and overlaid with moisture. But Wilberforce Elliot was an imposing figure, nonetheless, in that room arrayed for frivolity—a figure that stunned the assemblage to a devout and listening stillness.

“Your Grace,” the magistrate said, as he doffed his hat and bowed. A clubbed hank of black hair, thick and dirty as a bear’s, tumbled over one shoulder. “Your humble servant.”

“Mr. Elliot,” the Dowager Duchess replied. “You are very good to venture out at such an hour.”

“It is nothing, Your Grace—I had not yet sought my bed. May I be permitted to view the body?”

Eugenie inclined her head, and gestured towards the anteroom. After an instant’s hesitation, and the briefest survey of the appalled onlookers, Mr. Elliot made his ponderous way to the dead man’s side.

I let fall the window drape, and joined my party at a little remove from the anteroom itself, but affording an excellent prospect of the interior through the opened connecting doors.

“What a devil of a man to intrude upon the Dowager’s misery,” my sister Eliza whispered. “He might be Pantagruel from the Comédie Fran~aise! But I suppose the Duchess is familiar with such characters of old.”

“Eliza!” Henry muttered fiercely in his wife’s ear. “I have told you that oaths cannot become a lady!”

With a sigh and a grunt, Mr. Elliot forced his bulk to a creaking posture by Mr. Portal’s head. A quick twitch of the covering linen; a shrewd appraisal; and a forefinger bluntly probed at the dead man’s chest.

“And where is the knife?”

Dr. Gibbs cleared his throat and glanced at Lord Kinsfell. The Marquis sat with bowed head and slumped shoulders, his attention entirely turned within. The physician reached for the bloody thing, which had been laid
on a napkin by one of the footmen, and handed it to the magistrate.

“Ah, indeed,” Mr. Elliot said through pursed lips. “A cunning blade, is it not?”

No reply seemed adequate to this observation, but none was apparently deemed necessary.

“And you, sir, would be—?”

“Dr. Gibbs, of Milsom Street,” the Moor replied. “I have the honour to attend Her Grace.”

“Then I venture to suppose that you will declare the gentleman dead, will you not, Dr. Gibbs? What a quantity of blood there is, to be sure!”

Mr. Elliot sat back upon his massive haunches, and surveyed the body with a rueful look. “To come to such a pass, and in such a suit of clothes! I fancy
you
should not like to end in a similar fashion, eh, Gibbs?—A similar
fashion
, d’you see?” The corpulent magistrate laughed heartily. “Aye, that’s very good.”

A sudden whirl of skirts brought the black-haired Medusa furiously to his side.

“Mr. Elliot—if
that
is how you are called—I would beg you to comport yourself with some decency and respect! A man has been foully murdered—and you would make witticisms upon his attire? It is intolerable, sir! I must demand that you apologise immediately!”

“Apologise?” Mr. Elliot heaved himself painfully to his feet, and regarded Maria Conyngham with penetration. “And to whom must I apologise, pray? For the gentleman in question is beyond caring, my dear. And now tell me. Are you not Maria Conyngham, of the Theatre Royal?”

“I am, sir.”

“Enjoyed your Viola most thoroughly. Now be a good girl and stand aside. Your Grace!”

“Yes, Mr. Elliot?”

“I should like an account of this evening’s amusement.”

The Dowager glanced about her helplessly.

“I shall tell him, Grandmère,” interjected the Lady Desdemona. She had been seated near her brother, her hand on his, and now rose with an expression of fortitude, her countenance pale but composed. “Mr. Portal is the manager of the Theatre Royal, whose company we intended to celebrate this evening. The masquerade was some hours underway, when we were so fortunate as to enjoy a recital from
Macbeth
, performed by Mr. Hugh Conyngham—”

“Mr. Conyngham is where?”

“At your service, Mr. Elliot,” the actor replied, stepping forward.

“And in the recital you were positioned where?”

“In the drawing-room opposite, before the fire.”

“The assembly regarding you?”

“Of course.”

“And Mr. Portal was—?”

Lady Desdemona broke in with an exclamation of annoyance. “But that is what I am telling you!”

Her brother stood up abruptly. “Mr. Portal was within the anteroom where his body now lies. I know this, because I thrust open the door in the midst of Mr. Conyngham’s speech, and found him expired upon the floor. His assailant must have escaped through the anteroom window.”

Lord Kinsfell’s eyes were blazing as he conveyed this intelligence to the magistrate, but he swallowed painfully at its close; and I guessed him to labour under an excess of emotion all the more pitiable for its containment.

Mr. Elliot’s gaze swept the length of the Knight’s figure. “Do I have the honour of addressing the Marquis of Kinsfell?”

“You do, sir.”

“Heir to the Duchy of Wilborough?”

“I may claim that distinction.”

“—and possessor of the knife that murdered Mr. Richard Portal?”

A hesitation, and Lord Kinsfell bowed his head. “The knife has long been in our family’s possession, yes. It is a decorative blade from Bengal, bestowed upon my father by the directors of the East India Company.”