Jane Austen Mysteries 10 Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (21 page)

"And so you are come down from London," Mrs. Alleyn said. "How long a stay do you make in Brighton?"

"But a fortnight." I glanced at Henry. "My brother, Mr. Austen, has been so unfortunate as to recently lose his wife; and we are here in an attempt to raise his spirits."

"A widower!" She surveyed Henry with an appraising eye. "And in what part of the country are Mr. Austen's estates?"

I stifled a smile. "My brother is a banker, ma'am, and thus fixed in London."

Her interest waned.

"Mr. Austen is endlessly useful to Swithin," Desdemona supplied, "and Lord Moira quite
dotes
upon him, I believe. But
Miss
Austen is an intimate friend of my girlhood, and knew my dear late grandmamma in Bath. I was so pleased to brush against her in Donaldson's, and discover that she had come to Brighton for a bathing-cure."

"Do you mean to try the machines?" Mrs. Alleyn asked, her eyes widening a little; "I should not attempt it before July, at the earliest--the water is far too cold for my taste in May. But perhaps that is part of the cure; the nerves are shocked into order by the frigidity of the plunge."

"No doubt. Have you long been resident in Brighton?"

"Above five years. I removed here when my husband died--I was but a child, as you may conceive," she added, self-consciously, tho' I should never accuse her of being mutton dressed as lamb; she retained the bloom of youth, and
looked
several years my junior. "There is nothing like Brighton for banishing melancholy!"

"I had begun to wonder," I suggested doubtfully. "The distressing news of Miss Twining's death last evening--the probability of its being
murder
--very nearly convinced me to return to London! Such a town
cannot
be safe for unattached females! Poor Catherine, I said to my brother--To end in such a way!"

"You were acquainted with Miss Twining?" Mrs. Alleyn's countenance was all interest.

"A little."

"Ah," she said with satisfaction. "Then you will be wishing to condole with Louisa Silchester. She is quite cut up, poor lady--tho' not so melancholy as to avoid
all
society at present. Were she to hide in her rooms, the malicious might suspect her of negligence with regard to Miss Twining; and Louisa should never wish to forfeit the good opinion of Brighton.
She
cannot be held responsible for the girl's death,--or not before the inquest, at least. Of the coroner's opinion, we can as yet know nothing."

"--Or of General Twining's, I presume? If he held Mrs. Silchester in trust--placed his daughter in that lady's care--"

"General Twining! Do not
speak
to me of that odious fellow!" Mrs. Alleyn cried. "He had the presumption to
dangle
after me, Miss Austen, a full twelvemonth, when first I came to Brighton; and his persistence could hardly be endured! I was forced to speak quite plainly to the gentleman, and assure him in the strongest language that we should not suit. I've long since cut my Wisdoms, my dear--and saw in an instant that fortune was the General's first object! Female society is as nothing to
him
."
17

"And has he proved inconsolable? Has any other lady excited his notice? Mrs. Silchester, perhaps?"

"My dear," Mrs. Alleyn returned, "she has no money--and the General is entirely about
interest
. I am sure Louisa Silchester would have got him if she could--she was bosom-bows with his late wife from girlhood, I understand. The General is very sly--content to give his
daughter
into Mrs. Silchester's charge--but nothing in the matrimonial line has come of it!"

"If General Twining must be mercenary, I wonder that he did not promote his daughter's prospects," I observed. "Miss Twining felt herself doomed to a marriage she could not like--with a clergyman, greatly her elder. But perhaps there was a fortune in the case."

"You cannot mean Mr. Smalls?" Mrs. Alleyn laughed. "No fortune whatsoever, my dear. Such a match is in every way inexplicable; unless one assumes that the father was determined to destroy every hope in the female breast. So grim and humourless as he is! I make it my business to avoid any meeting with the General--and can only pity what his daughter's life must have been. Perhaps she drowned herself in despair! I can believe such a thing more readily than that Lord Byron killed her. But I detain you--Mrs. Silchester is at liberty, Sir John having quitted her; you will observe her by the bow window--the frail-looking lady, in the dove-grey. Louisa!"

Drowned herself in despair
. It was a thought, indeed; and had Catherine Twining been discovered cast up on the shingle, and not sewn into a hammock in Lord Byron's bed, I might have accorded Mrs. Alleyn's views more weight. But Henry had said there were marks of brutality at the girl's throat; she was no victim of self-murder. Someone had deliberately held her head beneath the waves.

Lady Swithin having been claimed by the fellow named Hodge, who was determined to teach her how to cast the bones, Mrs. Alleyn presented me to the tiny Mrs. Silchester, adding with an attempt at carelessness, "Miss Austen was a little acquainted with that unfortunate child, Miss Twining, you know."

Mrs. Silchester started and her eyes widened, as tho' I sported a Gorgon's head. She pressed one hand to her breast; both breast and hand were bony; and I concluded that the lady suffered from a nervous complaint, excited by the least novelty. "You
knew
poor Catherine?" she whispered. "But
how
? I thought you quite a stranger to Brighton, and all our little concerns!"

I should hardly describe murder as a
little concern
, but having no desire to frighten the lady further, I merely said: "I met Miss Twining in Cuckfield, on my journey hither. Indeed, we met under rather unusual circumstances."

That Mrs. Silchester understood my allusion, I readily perceived by her repressive look at Mrs. Alleyn. That far-too-penetrating lady, her object achieved, merely said, "You will have much to talk over, I suspect," and left me to my quarry with a nod and a smile.

"So it was you, I collect, who tore her from the Fiend's clutches in the stable yard? You, who delivered her from that unhappy state of bondage?" Mrs Silchester whispered.

"I and my brother. We were happy to be of service to Miss Twining."

"But, alas, her enemy proved too strong for us all." Mrs. Silchester's eyes closed, and her face blenched; she groped for support, and found only the bow window.

"I am sure you are unwell. Will you not sit down? On this sopha, perhaps?"

I led the frail being to a settee placed at an angle to the window, where she leaned back against the cushions a moment. Her countenance was dreadful. "If you could search out my vinaigrette," she said faintly, thrusting her reticule into my hands. "When I consider of that poor child--so young, so innocent, a mere dove among wolves--"

I loosed the strings and felt in the depths of the fabric bag; the vinaigrette was there, of course--no lady of Mrs. Silchester's demeanour could travel far without it. I removed the cap and wafted the bottle under my companion's nostrils. She gasped, pressed her fingers to her lips, and stared at me with welling eyes.

"You are unmarried, Miss Austen, but I am sure you cannot be entirely ignorant of the world."

"No indeed."

"Then you apprehend what
beasts
men are."

"In every person, I believe, there is the potential for bestiality--as well as for good."

"Not in Lord Byron," she said heavily. "He is entirely evil. The sort of evil Lucifer knows, that walks with an angelic face. I say so, Miss Austen, tho' the world acclaims him as a god; I want nothing of such idolatry. He killed poor Catherine because she saw him for what he was; she feared rather than loved him; and he could not endure to be repulsed."

"You are very sure in your accusations, ma'am, but it would appear not all the facts are yet known. Lord Byron may be innocent."

"Innocent! A falser word could never apply!" She struggled upright on the sopha, and seized her vinaigrette. "Since that Fiend came to Brighton, my poor Miss Twining has known not a moment's peace. Those who are little acquainted with that man's character like to say it is
sailing
, and the promise of good Society, that drew him here in defiance of Lady Oxford's wiles--but I know better! It was poor Catherine he sought, and Catherine upon whose frail body he slaked his vile lusts!"

Such language from so fragile a creature could not but be shocking; and had I been ignorant of Miss Twining's history--known nothing of the attempted abduction at Cuckfield--I might have judged Louisa Silchester a prey to fancies of the most lurid type, a creature enslaved to novel-reading and Gothick romance. But I had seen the cravat knotted around Miss Twining's wrists, had seen Lord Byron's countenance alter to something just short of demonic, upon the discovery of her liberation. I could not dismiss Louisa Silchester, however excessive her language.

"When did his lordship first meet Miss Twining?" I asked her.

"Some three weeks since, when she was sent home from her seminary in Bath." Mrs. Silchester dabbed at her eyes with a square of lawn. "Poor, dear child. Such an innocent, always. She had conceived a passion for a well-born young officer whose estates were in that part of the country--and dismissal was the result!"

"Indeed!" This was news of primary importance; Henry's Unknown made a tentative appearance. There had been a rival to Mr. Hendred Smalls--and a prior claimant to the heart Byron had so boldly besieged.

"Miss Twining in love!" I exclaimed. "She said nothing of this to me."

"She kept the matter very close, in terror of the General. I confess
I
do not even know the young gentleman's name, for she would never tell it to me. But I have thought of him often, in the hours following her death--and wondered how the intelligence was to reach him...."

"The General did not look with favour on a brother officer--and one in possession of estates?" I asked in some puzzlement.

Mrs. Silchester shook her head. "When Catherine's childish infatuation was penetrated by her headmistress, a letter to the General was the unfortunate result. The General sent for his daughter immediately, and threatened to keep her so close she might never see the light of day again--but that I persuaded him to let me try what a little judicious chaperonage might do. I thought it very likely that the Brighton Season should put all thought of officers out of her head. And the General agreed! He trusted me to put all right! I do not know
how
I am to meet with him now. His reproaches--"

"And Lord Byron?" I persisted. "That affair began some few weeks ago?"

"--He glimpsed her, as I understand, in the Promenade Grove. He fell instantly in love--sent round a tribute of flowers to Church Street that very afternoon--begged to be introduced to the General, which favour was immediately repulsed; and left again for London in flat despair. We congratulated ourselves that he had been defeated--for it would never do, you know, Miss Austen, to encourage the pretensions of such a person; his reputation for vice is so
very bad
. And he has no fortune to speak of--only debts, which intelligence the General naturally procured, before repulsing his lordship entirely."

There it was again: General Twining
must
be mercenary. That Louisa Silchester saw nothing to object to in this was hardly to be remarked upon; her understanding did not appear to be powerful.

"Lord Byron returned to Brighton, I collect?"

"And to his pursuit of Catherine," the lady said ominously. "A direct approach having failed, he began to haunt Church Street--he has acquaintance in the vicinity--and barely a day went by that we were not forced to meet with his pleas. Entire cantos of poetry were left with Lord Byron's card, which verses the General immediately confiscated and threw on the fire; a sad waste of talent, I daresay. It was as tho' Lord Byron was
mad with love
, and I might have pitied him--but for the turn his passion took. You know too well the episode at Cuckfield; that he returned to Brighton at all, in defiance of a parent's natural indignation, is to be wondered at--and that he should prove so bold as to appear at the
Assembly
, as tho' nothing untoward had happened--"

Mrs. Silchester was correct: Such behaviour must provoke wonder. Either Lord Byron was too firmly in the grip of passion to retain his reason, despite the claims of propriety; or he cared nothing for propriety at all. Either attitude, for a gentleman of his consequence, argued a disregard for the bounds of society that bordered on the mad. But when one had already so far overstepped convention, it was not, I reflected, so very far a stretch to
murder
.

"Having been discovered in an attempted abduction, I had assumed that his lordship would never descend upon Brighton again," Louisa Silchester muttered. "But I failed to consider that nobody but ourselves was aware of the event; it could not be generally published; the town remained in ignorance, and welcomed Lord Byron's return; the General observed the strictest silence, for Catherine's sake. He had lately formed the idea of uniting her in marriage to a respectable clergyman--Mr. Hendred Smalls--from a desire to preserve the child's good name. Questionable young officers and poets proved too much for the General's patience; he wished to see Catherine safely bestowed in matrimony before another month was out. No reproach could attach to the virtue of Mr. Smalls's wife, the General believed; no blemish could darken the Twining name. The General is very jealous of his dignity," she added, by way of explanation.

"So I have been made to understand."

"Lord Byron saw his advantage in our silence. Not content with destroying the poor child's peace, he pursued her the length and breadth of the Assembly last night, calling Catherine by a heathen name--
Leila
, some Attic language of which I know nothing--glowering at her through every dance; thrusting his way, on that hideous leg, into her slightest conversation, to demand a private word she could not grant--his face by turns burning with passion, and dead white with rage. I could have kissed the painted feet of that Caro Lamb, when she entered the ballroom and put flight to the Fiend--I was never so pleased to see anybody in my life!"