Jane and His Lordship's Legacy

Chapter 15 Damning Evidence

7 July 1809, cont.

“I should explain, Miss Austen, that I have found it difficult to sleep of nights for some weeks past. The heat, perhaps, of July—”

Catherine broke off, and began to walk slowly once more in the direction of Alton. I studied her averted countenance, and recognised the marks of trouble; the girl had not been easy in her mind, I should judge, for too many days together. I had an image of her lying alone in her bedchamber, a picture of stillness beneath a white linen sheet, while a furious tide of thoughts swelled and resurged within her brain.

Resolutely, Catherine began again. “On the evening of Saturday last, I went to my room at ten o’clock, as is my habit. I was not conscious of the passage of the hours as I lay wakeful in my bed, the usual sounds of a summer night drifting through the open window; but I recollect with the sharpest clarity the tolling of the St. Nicholas church bell at midnight. I sat up, and counted the strokes, and told myself that this wretched want of peace must end, or utterly destroy my pleasure in life. I lit my candle and took up the book that sits always near my pillow, and read for a little; and when the heaviness of my eyes suggested I might at last find rest, I first got up, and fetched a drink of water from the washstand. I was returning to the tumbled bedclothes once more — when I heard the most dreadful noises arising from the darkness.”

She glanced at me appealingly, as tho’ wishing to be spared the next few words. “It was the sound of men fighting. I went to the window and lifted the sash so widely that I might lean out into the summer’s night. The moon was almost at the full, and the scene below was as clear to me as daylight. In the distance, well beyond the reach of our sweep and the angle of your cottage, two men were locked in a furious embrace, grappling.”[18]

“Could you distinguish their faces?”

She shook her head in the negative. “I could not. The distance at which they moved prevented me from recognising their features.”

“But I thought you said. ”

“Pray hear me out, Miss Austen,” she demanded. “This is difficult enough.”

I inclined my head, and so she continued.

“They were emitting the most horrid noises imaginable. Or I should say: one of the men was doing so. Grunts, hoarse cries, squeals of pain. The other — the taller of the two — preserved an awful silence, as tho’ so intent upon his object, that he could not spare a thought for his injuries. As I watched, he o’erwhelmed his adversary and drove the man down towards the earth. I heard nothing more. I believe, now, that he had succeeded in thrusting Shafto French’s head — for so I guess the lesser man to have been — beneath the waters of Chawton Pond. After an interval, all grappling ceased; and the victor rose.”

“Good God,” I said. “Why did you not scream? Why did you not sound the alarum, and rouse your father?”

“I was paralysed by the violence and horror I had witnessed,” she returned quietly. “Fear pressed so heavily upon my breast that I do not believe I could have spoken, had I tried; and my trembling arms could barely support my frame as I leaned without the window. It is fortunate I did not swoon entirely away. And there was also this, Miss Austen: the quality of the scene, in its flood of moonlight, was so spectral as to convince me I had witnessed nothing but a dream, a nightmare of my own mind’s fabrication. Altho’ terrified, I could not be convinced in that moment that what I saw was real. ”

I could, in truth, comprehend the disorder of her wits, and the cruel doubt of her mind. “And the rest of the household heard nothing?”

“My sister Ann is a sound sleeper, and her room — like my parents’—is at the rear. We are all so accustomed to the noise of coaches passing along the Winchester Road of nights, that little can disturb our slumbers. I believe I overheard the scene by the pond solely because I was already awake.”

“I understand. And what did you then?”

She shook her head furiously, as if she might shake off the hideous memory. “I could not move. I remained by the window, staring out in an agony of indecision and disbelief. The man rose — the man whom I now comprehend was French’s murderer — and moved into the shadows of the trees bordering the pond. He must have untethered a horse at that point, for the only sound I subsequently heard was that of hoofbeats, as his mount made its way down the road.”

“Did he ride south, in the direction of Winchester — or north, past your sweep, towards Alton?”

“South,” she replied. “He did not pass within my sight at that time.”

I was silent an instant, revolving the intelligence. Julian Thrace had admitted to riding out of the Great House a little after midnight, but would claim that he had gone north in the direction of Alton. Had he indeed murdered Shafto French, this declaration was no more than wisdom. Thrace must assume that Mr. Middleton would freely disclose his presence in Chawton on the night of the murder and his departure at very nearly the hour of French’s death. Had Thrace quitted the Great House by previous arrangement with his victim? Was Thrace the heir as would pay, in Shafto French’s words?

“It was as I stood there, drawing shuddering breaths and attempting to calm my disordered wits,” Catherine persisted, “that the sound of hoofbeats returned.”

“Returned?”

“Even so. The horse drew up near the pond, and after an interval of silence — which might have encompassed a minute or an hour, Miss Austen, I scarcely know — I observed a figure to dismount, and bend over a dark object lying like a felled tree in the grass. Next I knew, the living man was struggling across the Winchester Road with the ankles of the other in his grasp, dragging that mortal weight in the direction of your cottage. I stared through the darkness, my heart in my mouth, for I knew the place to be deserted. I lost sight of them both at the hedge enclosing your property.”

I gazed at Catherine Prowting, aghast at such a want of resolution: “And even then, you did not go to your father with a cry of murder?”

“I did not yet know that French — for it must have been he — was indeed dead, Miss Austen. He might only have been insensible, from the effects of his beating or the drink that might have inspired it. How could I know? I merely stood, in the most dreadful suspense imaginable, by the open window. And presently, the second man returned.”

She paused at this point, as tho’ summoning strength for what she must now say.

“He approached his horse and mounted; and this time he rode in the opposite direction — towards the Great House, and Alton beyond. As he passed by the end of our sweep, I discerned his profile clearly in the moonlight, and knew in an instant whose it was. No other gentleman’s could be so immediately recognisable.”

The path of duty, versus the urgings of the heart.

“You saw Julian Thrace?” I whispered.

“Mr. Thrace?” She blushed with a swift and painful intensity.

“No, no, Miss Austen — it was Mr. Jack Hinton I observed in the Street that night.”

I could not contain my astonishment at this revelation, and must be thrice assured of its veracity before I could take it in. Mr. Hinton! Mr. Hinton, who had professed disdain for the coroner’s proceeding, tho’ sitting pale and silent through the whole; Mr. Hinton, who had affected to abhor violence and the pollution of Chawton’s shades. Mr. Hinton, who called himself the heir of the Hampshire Knights, and who thus might reasonably be styled the object of Shafto French’s greed, did the blackmailing labourer know somewhat to the gentleman’s discredit. And there was the fact of Hinton’s blood tie to James Baverstock, who might have provided a key to our cottage. But Mr. Hinton — the indolent poet of my imagining — seemed the unlikeliest candidate for murder in all the countryside. What could be the meaning of it?

“Why should Jack Hinton kill Shafto French?” I demanded of Catherine.

“I do not know. Perhaps it was. a mistake of some kind.”

“You did not describe a mistake, but an episode of deadly intent. What you witnessed from your window that night was a deliberate act of murder.”

“I know! I cannot account for it! Do you not apprehend that the scene has arisen in my mind hour after hour until I thought I must go mad? Why does one man ever take the life of another?”

“—From jealousy. From greed. From hatred or fear. But Shafto French? Can you think of any reason why Jack Hinton the gentleman should hate or fear the labouring man?”

She was silent, lips compressed. “Only what may be found in the idle talk of any tavern in Alton,” she said at last. “The whole countryside would have it that the child Jemima French now bears is in fact Jack Hinton’s.”

“Good God!” I cried. “There is a motive for murder if ever I heard one. The dead man a cuckold — and no one sees fit to mention it to the coroner?”

She turned scandalised eyes upon me. Cuckold, I must suppose, was the sort of word that should never be mentioned around the dining table at Prowtings.

“I do not credit the story,” she rejoined firmly, “and no more does any sensible person in Alton or Chawton. Jemima was once in service at the Lodge, and was dismissed over some disagreement with Miss Hinton. But rumour has followed her, as it will any pretty girl; and French did nothing by his manners or treatment of his wife to discourage it.”

I have worked all my life, Mrs. French had told me, and am not afraid of it. Brave words for a woman with no more reputation to preserve. Improprieties, Miss Beckford had said, and ill-usage. And so the gossip had come round in a circle: from the Great House to Alton and back again to Prowtings, to form a noose for Jack Hinton’s neck.

“You must assuredly speak to your father,” I told Catherine, “and endeavour to explain why you have waited nearly a week to do so.”

“I know that I am much to blame,” she muttered brokenly, “but pray believe me, Miss Austen, when I declare that it was from no improper desire to shield Mr. Hinton from the full weight of the Law!”

Her accent in pronouncing this final word was so akin to the dignity of her father’s, that I very nearly smiled. “I had thought it possible that you preserved a tendre for the gentleman.”

“A tendre! Indeed, the esteem — the appearance of interest or affection — has been entirely on Mr. Hinton’s side. I may like — I may have respected him once, before I knew— That is to say, any sentiment of regard has been thoroughly done away by Mr. Hinton’s repulsion of my efforts to make all right.”

“Your efforts—? My dear Miss Prowting, do not say that you have informed the gentleman that you observed him to drag a body towards my cottage!”

“But of course I have! I could not so expose him to the censure of his neighbours, or indeed the risk of his very life, without taxing him with all I had seen, and begging him most earnestly to make a clean breast of his guilt to my father in private!”

I stopped short on the very edge of Alton, my feelings almost incapable of expression. “Do you not realise, you silly girl, that where a man has murdered once, he may easily do so a second time, merely to save his own neck? Your life should not have five seconds’ purchase in Mr. Hinton’s company! I only pray God you have not encountered him alone!”

“No,” she admitted, “I had not that courage. Indeed, I have loathed Mr. Hinton’s very presence since the discovery of French’s body in your cellar, and my comprehension of what it must mean. I have pled the head-ache, and taken to my room, excepting the necessity of social obligations that could not be overborne. I spoke to Mr. Hinton in the Great Hall at Chawton last night, and by way of reply, was given to understand that if I preserved any regard for his reputation, I must reveal nothing of what I had seen. He did not go so far as to threaten me—”

“Then he is not so stupid as I believed him.”

“—but neither did he reassure my darkest fears with an explanation that could soften me. He intimated — if you will credit it! — that if I might offer this proof of loyalty and esteem — if I could go so far as to shield him with my silence — that I might reasonably expect to be mistress of the Lodge one day.” She laughed abruptly; no fool Catherine. She should value such an offer as she ought, and know it for a bribe.

“When I understood, a few hours later, that my father meant to charge poor Bertie Philmore with French’s murder, I knew that I was left no choice but to act, since Mr. Hinton refused to do so.”

I placed my arm within Catherine Prowting’s as we passed the first of Alton’s shops and houses. “You are possessed of singular courage, my dear. I am determined all the same not to let you out of my sight until I have seen you safely into the care of Mr. Prowting. Let Jack Hinton do his worst — we shall be ready for him!”

We discovered, through the simple expedient of vigourous interrogation at the George Inn, that Mr. Prowting had been observed to enter Mr. John Dyer’s premises at Ivy House — a trim building not without charm, and the attraction of a series of Gothick arched casements. The magistrate was as yet engaged there. I accompanied Catherine to the builder’s door, and tho’ curious as to the nature of Mr. Prowting’s business, declined to intrude. I had an idea of the conversation: the magistrate in his heavy, forthright way demanding to know whether Bertie Philmore could have stolen Dyer’s keys to Chawton Cottage on the Saturday night of French’s murder; and Mr. Dyer — in his succinct, pugnacious style — steadfastly refusing to allow it to be possible. Mr. Prowting was destined to suffer a revolution of opinion, and a disorder of all his ideas, when once his daughter’s story was heard; but I did not like to witness his discomfiture. Let him endure the severest pangs of regret beyond the reach of his neighbours, and collect his faculties during the brief walk home from Alton to Chawton. Prowting would require the full measure of his sense for the coming interview with Mr. John-Knight Hinton, Esquire. The murder of Shafto French might well be explained by Catherine Prowting’s confession, but the disappearance of Lord Harold’s chest was not. I made my own way to Normandy Street, and kept a keen lookout for a yard full of laundry. Halfway up the lane, on the opposite side of the paving, I detected a quantity of white lawn secured by wooden pegs to a line of rope. A tidy picket preserved the yard from the ravages of dogs and children, and a few flowers bloomed near its palings. No figure moved among the hanging linen, and the door of the nearby cottage was closed. I glanced upwards at the chimney, however, and observed a thin thread of smoke. A girl of perhaps ten years answered my knock, and stared at me gravely from the threshold.

“Is your mother within?”

She nodded mutely.

“You may tell her that Miss Jane Austen is come to call.”

“Bid the lady welcome, Mary,” a voice commanded from the interior.

The child stepped back, pulling the door wide. I moved into the room, and saw that it was no foyer or front passage, but merely the cottage’s place of all work, with a few benches drawn up to a scrubbed pine table, a hob with a great kettle boiling on the banked embers of the hearth, and several irons warming in the fire. A woman sat rocking an infant at her breast; she gazed at me with neither welcome nor trepidation on her features.

“Are you Rosie Philmore?”

“I am.”

“Miss Jane Austen, at your service. It was at my home in Chawton, Mrs. Philmore, that your husband was. ” I glanced at the silent little girl named Mary and hesitated. “. found, last evening.”

“What of it?”

The child moved swiftly to her mother’s side and stared at me with wide and frightened eyes.

“Would it be possible to talk a while,” I attempted, “in private?”

“Do you go in search of your brothers, Mary,” Mrs. Philmore said. “They’ll be down near the Wey, I’ll be bound, fishing with young Zakariah Gibbs. Tell them their dinner’s waiting. Go on, now.”

The girl fled out a rear door, two washtubs visible in the grass beyond it. I waited until the door creaked shut behind her before speaking again.

“Mrs. Philmore, I know that your husband is detained in Alton gaol at this moment. He may be guilty of entering my home — he may even have taken something of great value that belongs to me — but I do not believe he murdered Shafto French.”

“He was home at midnight Saturday,” she said stoutly, “like he said. I’ll swear to that, to my dying day.”

“I am sure you will. But Mr. Prowting thinks otherwise, and Mr. Prowting is magistrate for Alton, and determined to hang somebody for French’s murder. I do not think it will concern him much if he hangs the wrong man.”

In this, I may have done my neighbour an injustice; but my words had the effect I desired. Rosie Philmore closed her eyes, as if surrendering to a sudden shaft of pain, and drew a shuddering breath.

“It’s all on account of those jewels,” she said. I frowned. Had Thrace’s tale of the rubies of Chandernagar reached so far as Alton?

“—That chest of yours, what the great man from London brought special in his carriage. People will talk of anything, ma’am. You’re a stranger in these parts, so you’re not to know. Scandalous it was, how they talked — about the fortune you’d received from a dead lord, and what the man might have been paying for. I didn’t listen no more than others — but Bert’s ears grew so long with hanging on every word, I thought they’d scrape the floor by week’s end. And then he told me, two nights past, the truth of the tale.”

“The truth?”

She opened her eyes, still rocking the infant, and stared straight at me. “That ’tweren’t jewels a’tall, nor gold neither, but a chest full of papers. Papers as somebody’d pay a good bit to see.”

A thrill of apprehension coursed through me. “Your husband knew what the chest contained?”

“Of course. Heard it of his uncle, Old Philmore, he did.”

“Old Philmore? But I am not even acquainted with the man.”

“Old Philmore knew, all the same.”

As had Lady Imogen. Was it she who set the joiner’s family on to stealing Lord Harold’s papers?

“Your husband was engaged by Mr. Dyer to work at my cottage. He was also employed, I understand, at Stonings in Sherborne St. John — the Earl of Holbrook’s estate. Was Old Philmore ever working there?”

“Of course. It was from Old Philmore my Bert learned his trade. He’s a rare joiner, Old Philmore.”

“Has your husband’s uncle been to see you? Has he called upon Bertie, in Alton gaol?”

She appeared to stiffen, like a woods animal grown suddenly wary of a trap.

“He’ll be along, soon enough.”

“You do not know where he is at present?”

“In Chawton. He lives there, same as yerself.”

“Old Philmore has not been seen since your husband was taken up last night, Mrs. Philmore.”

She leaned forward in her chair, the babe thrust into her lap. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Old Philmore appears to have fled. Is not that a singular coincidence? — That your husband should be sitting in gaol for a theft that cannot profit him, while his uncle is nowhere to be found?”

For an instant, I watched Rosie Philmore comprehend the import of my words. Then she laughed with a bitter harshness.

“Not if you know Bert’s family, ma’am. If there’s a way to turn a penny from hardship, Old Philmore’ll find it.”

From Normandy Street I made my way towards Austen, Gray & Vincent, feeling exposed to every eye and the subject of every chance conversation. Far more of my business was known than I had understood before, and the knowledge could not help but make me uneasy. Lady Imogen had spoken of the existence of Lord Harold’s papers with easy familiarity; but this I had dismissed as the knowledge of a family friend. I must now assume the contents of the chest were also known to Major Spence and Mr. Thrace, with whom her ladyship was intimate; as clearly they were known to the Philmores and their circle. I could no longer suppose the information to be privileged. Last night I had presumed the chest was stolen because of the rumour of fabulous wealth attached to it. I apprehended now that Lord Harold’s legacy had been seized for exactly the reason it has always been so sedulously guarded by the solicitor Mr. Chizzlewit and his confederates — because of the danger inherent in its communications. The theft had not been made at random: deep in the chest lay a truth that one person at least could not allow to be known. Was he content in having stolen the trunk and the dangerous memories it held? Or did the threat still walk abroad, with an intelligence that lived and breathed?

Was I even now in peril, by virtue of what I had already read?

I revolved what little of Lord Harold’s history I had perused. There were anecdotes of Warren Hastings; an old scandal of early love and a hasty duel; the animus between Lord Harold and one man — the Viscount St. Eustace — and his friendship for another, the Earl of Holbrook. A vague suggestion of activity on behalf of noble French émigrés during the Reign of Terror, and Lord Harold’s dedication to the salvation of a few; and the mention of Geoffrey Sidmouth, whom I had known myself in Lyme Regis some years before, and remembered with poignant affection. And then there was the Frenchwoman named Hélène, whom the Rogue first met while en route from India to England in 1785. But I had found no firm indication as to the father of Hélène’s child, to whom he later referred. It was possible, I supposed, that Julian Thrace might claim to be the woman’s son. But as to his paternity? Had Thrace been sired by her affianced husband, the Viscount St. Eustace? Or by wild Freddy Vansittart, smitten on the Punjab?

Or Lord Harold himself?

At that thought, I stopped dead in the middle of the High. And saw again in my mind’s eye the lazy beauty of Thrace’s face. It bore not the slightest resemblance to Lord Harold’s sharp features; but neither did it resemble Lady Imogen Vansittart’s. And the Rogue, I felt sure, was the sort of man who should always know his sons. The truth was somewhere in Lord Harold’s papers. That the chest was seized on the very night I had dined with the intimates of Stonings, must cause me to believe that one of them — Lady Imogen, or Thrace himself — had long been aware of the danger Lord Harold’s writings posed. One of them had hired Old Philmore and his nephew.

“Jane,” my brother Henry said with a frown as I entered his rooms at No. 10, “it has been as I predicted. Julian Thrace has had the poor taste to stop here on his way to Sherborne St. John, and require of me a loan. ”

“Lady Imogen’s Devil in the cards?” I enquired. “How much is demanded for the preservation of the Beau’s honour?”

“All of five hundred pounds! — To be issued in notes backed by gold in my London branch! The effrontery of the fellow, Jane, to presume on such a slight social acquaintance! But what else, after all, has Thrace ever done?”

“You are a banker, Henry — and I must suppose a gaming debt contracted in a gentleman’s household is a pressing affair, that must be paid with despatch. Particularly when one is living cheek by jowl with the lady demanding payment.”

“He might have offered her his vowels,” Henry retorted crossly, “and applied to friends in London for the whole.[19] I cannot be easy in my mind regarding Thrace’s security for any sum advanced to him, despite the Earl’s apparent regard, and all the frenzy of activity in rebuilding Stonings.”

“Perhaps you shall be easier once you have visited the place.”

My brother merely stared.

“We are all invited to picnic there tomorrow — yourself expressly desired by Major Spence, who should like to interrogate you regarding the Vyne hunt, Henry.”

“But I had meant to return to London in the morning!”

“Poor sport, Henry! Consider the heat and stink of Town in such a season; and then, you know, nobody worth your notice is likely to be there.”

“No more they are,” he replied thoughtfully, “but Eliza is sure to have my head if I desert her in all the packing. We intended our removal for the end of July, you know — in time to join our friends in Scotland for the shooting months.”

“August is weeks away,” I said equably, “and if you stay in Hampshire, you might assist me in the treasure hunt.”

“Not the rubies, Jane?”

“Mamma will have discovered those before the month is out,” I told him dismissively. “No, Henry — it is Lord Harold’s papers I mean to find. I am convinced they are even now well hidden at Stonings.”