Jane and the Canterbury Tale

Chapter Fourteen The Bride’s Tale

22 October 1813, Cont.

Adelaide Fiske Maccallister, née Thane, entered the drawing-room with all the grace she had long claimed; but I should judge that her usual composure was lacking. She was beautifully arrayed in a morning dress of striped French twill, with a high, stiff collar and sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrist, a complex of stile and neatness not often achieved. Her countenance, however, was drawn and pale, and the expression in her eyes was bleak; her dark hair was simply arranged in a knot at the nape of her neck that in another woman should have appeared dowdy; on Adelaide, it achieved a Grecian purity.

Striding into the room behind her was her brother, Julian Thane. He was dressed for riding—but so elegantly that I must have assumed his destination to be Hyde Park, rather than his cousin’s stables. A stray lock of dark hair curled romantickally over his forehead; his countenance was interestingly pale. He bowed carelessly to us all, but his eyes were fixed on his mother’s forbidding looks.

“As we sow, dearest ma’am, so shall we reap,” he said by way of greeting. “Is that not the bit of wisdom you are forever whispering in my ear? How apt, in the present instance! Nothing would do for you but to cut Addie dead upon her marriage—thereby ensuring that her blackguard of a husband should find little profit in mending his ways. We are justly served! The fellow is never done plaguing her, even in death!”

“Silence!” Mrs. Thane replied.

Her son’s black brows snapped together and his eyes narrowed; but without another word, he dismissed the woman from his consideration and turned towards Fanny. “Miss Knight. It is truly a pleasure to meet with you again—the morning’s sun doing only greater justice to your charms.”

Fanny coloured, and offered the hand he was clearly seeking. He bowed over it, then looked enquiringly at me. “I regret that I am unacquainted with your … sister?”

Such a blatant essay at flattery! But when tempered with a raised brow and a quirk of the lips, could not fail of being charming.

“My aunt, Miss Austen,” Fanny returned reprovingly. “May I present Mr. Thane?”

“I am very glad to meet you, sir.” And so I was. For many reasons—romantic and violent—Mr. Thane could not help but be an object of interest with me. I judged him to be younger than Adelaide—perhaps only just of age[7]. How well had he known Curzon Fiske, or the sad history of his sister’s marriage? Would not he have been away at school for much of it? The curious rebuke Thane had only now offered his mother suggested an intimacy with—and a repugnance for—his sister’s trials. What were Thane’s loyalties to Adelaide—or her new husband, Andrew MacCallister?

And would not a gentleman who had been out some once or twice, as Fanny put it, be more likely to challenge Fiske to a duel rather than shoot him in cold blood? There were any number of spurs to such a meeting; Thane might have accused his late brother of desertion, for example, or of an insult to a lady, and been entirely within his rights in challenging Fiske. Murder outright, however … I did not think it suited the gentleman.

Being too well aware of the danger of prejudice, however, I resolved to ignore the promptings of my better self, and rank Julian Thane high among my suspects.

Fanny had risen from her place and moved towards Adelaide MacCallister; she was speaking in her firm, soft voice, and I must attend.

“I hope, Mrs. MacCallister, that you do not think ill of us for descending upon Chilham Castle in this way—so hard upon the tragic discovery. The fact of my father’s being charged with a duty in respect of Mr. Fiske’s death, and his intention of paying a call upon Mr. Wildman, resolved my aunt and me in accompanying him; but indeed, we have outstayed our welcome, and ought to be taking leave.”

“Pray, do not go on my account,” she returned calmly, and seated herself in one of Mrs. Wildman’s Louis XV chairs. “I know full well why your excellent father has come—and must speak with him in my turn, no doubt, whenever he commands it. Curzon was murdered; he was shot down like a dog in the night, and left to bleed out his heart; and I should be a very strange woman indeed if I did not feel the loss. I loved him to distraction once—and his was a terrible death. No matter how poor a husband, or how reprehensible a man, he did not deserve it.”

“Adelaide!” Mrs. Thane was outraged. “Hold your tongue! Pray consider of the Captain!”

A faint smile twisted Mrs. MacCallister’s lips. “I consider of little else, Mamma, as I am sure you know. But I do feel this death most acutely; and the fact that I am now united to another, with all the bonds of affection and duty that attend such a union, cannot entirely negate the love I once bore my first husband. I am happy to speak of him; indeed, I think I shall sooner lay his unhappy ghost to rest, if I do speak of Curzon. Were you at all acquainted with him, Miss Knight?”

Fanny shook her head.

“Nor you, Miss Austen? You were denied a singular pleasure, then.” She laughed a little to herself, as tho’ revolving a good joke, a smile teazing at the corners of her mouth. Had I not detected the signs of grief and worry in her countenance at her first appearance, I should have thought her free of all care. Something of this knowledge must have strayed across her mind, for she raised her eyes to mine with limpid clarity.

“I know it is very bad in me not to betray more sensibility,” she confessed, “but had you only known Curzon—! He was the most high-spirited man I have ever met, the most charming … and the least scrupulous. I shock you—I know I shock you—but the openness with which he met each deception he practiced, and owned to his thorough vice, almost disarmed reproof! He was so honest in his misdealings, you see. Had I been a little older, and more aware of the cost of his folly, I should have avoided him like the Devil, tho’ it must have broke my heart; as it was, I was just young enough to cast reason to the winds—and I adored him. There was a time when I should have died for him, sold myself for him, stolen for him—and regarded all as a privilege.”

“Adelaide!” her mother cried. “Consider where you are!”

The lady glanced aside, as tho’ in contemplation of a distant scene, lost to memory. “Such frolics as we had, and such disasters! Such extremities of passion, such quarrels, and such reconciling! I shall never feel for any man in that way again; and I declare I am relieved to own it.”

“Wretched girl!” her mother spluttered. “Only think if the poor Captain should hear you!”

“Andrew?” Mrs. MacCallister laughed again; but this time, the gaiety was rueful. “Andrew understood the bad bargain he bought in me—for I told him all, myself—but I must pity him just the same. It is something, for a man to find himself foresworn on his very wedding night—I should have liked to have spared him that indignity, at least.”

“Nonsense,” her brother said languidly. “Tylden tied the knot right and tight again between you this morning. Andrew’s a good’un; he’ll stand buff, don’t you fear it, Addie. The fellow’s not the sort to stumble over rough ground; there are few men I’d rather see beside you in such a fix as this.”

“Let us hope, then, that he is not dragged off to Canterbury gaol,” Adelaide observed calmly.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mrs. Wildman with a startled look. “The very idea! And the Captain such an honourable gentleman, too! I should think he’d seen enough of death under Wellington’s command without having to seek it in Kent. You mark my words, Addie—it’ll be a common footpad as did for poor Mr. Fiske, and long since gone from the neighbourhood if he has a particle of sense. Fearsome times we live in, with the Regent spending all our incomes and a different army to be paid for every week—It is no wonder the footpads have grown so troublesome; they must make a living somehow as well, poor fellows.”

“A footpad will hardly have discarded James’s duelling pistol in St. Lawrence churchyard, Cousin Joanna,” said Julian Thane.

His words, naturally, caused a sensation.

“James’s pistol!” cried Charlotte Wildman incredulously. “The one Papa ordered specially in London a few years since?”

“That’s the ticket—the pistol, or one of the pair, from Manton’s that James is forever showing off. He likes to clip the suits from playing cards at twenty paces, Miss Knight, when he’s a trifle bosky,” he confided to Fanny, “and the billiard-room wall is shot through with holes on the strength of it.”

Almost despite herself, Fanny dimpled; Thane’s manner was irresistible.

“I am sure Julian is mistaken,” Mrs. Wildman said comfortably as she patted Charlotte’s hand.

“Nothing to do with me,” Julian drawled. “I had it from the Magistrate himself—when he sat me down to ask what I did the night of the ball. Told him I drank a brandy with James after the last of the guests had gone—it was that Tylden party, naturally; one can never be rid of the prosy parson. Twitch shut up the house, and we all went off to bed. Unfortunately, as I sleep alone”—this, with a telling gleam at my niece I could not approve—“I’ve nobody to support me in the assertion. No reward for the just, upon my honour! One has only to snore like a lamb until ten o’clock in the morning, to be met with an accusation of murder the next day!”

“But what can James’s pistol have been doing in St. Lawrence churchyard, in Heaven’s name?” Mrs. Wildman reverted, in a bewildered tone.

“Well may you ask, Joanna. Well may you ask.” A strangely triumphant smile broke on Mrs. Thane’s countenance. “I have an idea the Magistrate shall be most pressing on that point.”

“Whatever are you about, Augusta?” Mrs. Wildman demanded. “You look positively in alt!”

“Perhaps it is a natural elevation of feeling, Joanna, at the reflection that sinners may cast no stones!”

“Sinners?” Mrs. Wildman repeated blankly.

“There shall be no more talk of Adelaide creeping from her marriage bed in the dead of night, once James is clapped in irons!”

Mrs. Wildman emitted a sharp scream, and flung her hands to her breast, with a look of such terror on her visage that I quite felt for the silly woman; her daughter Louisa hastened to her aid with a vinaigrette, which I must imagine was often employed for the purpose of regulating her mother’s spirits. And there, too, was Thane.

“Dear Cousin Joanna, I fear you are overset,” he observed with solicitude. “Pray allow me to escort you upstairs.”

“Never mind playing off your airs, Julian,” Louisa said crossly. “I shall convey Mamma.”

She was supported in this by her sister; and the three Wildman ladies quitted the room in high dudgeon—and probably a measure of relief.

Fanny rose from her chair and curtseyed to the Thanes. “Indeed, you have been very kind—but Miss Austen and I must take our leave.”

“Before your father’s business is concluded?” Adelaide enquired. “My husband is even now in his hands, Miss Knight. I collect it is the coroner’s assumption that poor Andrew somehow discovered the existence of his rival, and killed him in a passion of jealousy.”

“Do sit down, Miss Knight,” Julian urged. “I should never forgive myself if you were to leave us, while the issue of Andrew’s fate still hung in suspense.”

Fanny looked to me in bewilderment. She had not the slightest idea whether to be firm, and beg that the tilbury be brought round, or to linger at the request of the Thanes. She had no notion her father wished me to learn what I could of the interesting grouping now before us. Theirs was the strangest complex of frankness, on the one hand, and determined suppression on the other, that I had ever witnessed in a family; and I wondered whether the casual boldness of both children was the sole weapon available to combat so repressive a parent.

Mindful of Edward, I determined to adopt a similar bluntness and decide Fanny’s quandary. I retained my chair, and smiled warmly at Adelaide MacCallister.

“Whatever the coroner may have suggested, my brother shall weigh against all that he observes and is told. He must pursue the obvious—and forgive me, Mrs. MacCallister, but in such a case as this, your husband must be possessed of the most obvious motive—but Edward is hardly a simple man, and as magistrate he is aware that murder may be a complex business.”

“Indeed?” the bride said. “Then I may begin to hope.”

Julian Thane emitted a short bark of laughter. “Hope! Tell me, Addie—in which direction does hope lie? Must we hope that James shot Curzon? Or his father, our excellent Cousin Wildman? Would you rather I had done it, perhaps? Or even … Mamma?”

“Julian!” hissed Mrs. Thane.

He thrust himself out of his chair and began to pace before the fire like a caged animal. Fanny, I observed, had flushed becomingly and her eyes glittered as she watched his progress; Thane’s energies were palpable in the room, a current that ensnared and compelled. He was unlike any young man she had yet encountered in Kent, and knowing too much of rogues myself, I sympathised with her fascination.

“Do not be a fool, Mamma,” he muttered. “If James’s pistol fired the killing ball, then some one in this household employed it. We must all be suspect until the murderer is discovered.”

“Nonsense,” she said quellingly. “It is as Joanna says—a footpad did away with Fiske, and stole the gun from Chilham first.”

Thane stopped his revolutions upon the hearth and stared at her in disbelief. “Good God, Mamma! Do you wilfully cultivate the credulous?”

The lady shrugged defiantly. “I do not see why my explanation should be any worse than another. Indeed, I regard it as the truth.”

“Perhaps that is because you are not in possession of all the facts,” I interposed quietly, before she could respond. “There is the matter of the tamarind seed, for example.”

A pause followed these simple words, a pause so profound it was as tho’ air and light had left the room, paralysing all within it except myself.

I glanced from one Thane to another, conscious of Fanny’s confused hesitation beside me. “It was a silken pouch of tamarind seeds Curzon Fiske delivered to this house on the night of your wedding, was it not, Mrs. MacCallister?”

“How do you … we cannot know it was Curzon who …”

“I advise you most strongly, Adelaide, to say nothing further to this woman,” Mrs. Thane spat out. Her suspension of breath had subsided; her gaunt face was livid with fury. “Despicable presumption! She is no better than her brother’s spy! I must beg you to leave us at once, Miss Austen!”

Fanny rose, and with a swift bob was halfway to the door when Julian Thane reached her, and clasped her wrist.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t go—yet. Your aunt interests me strangely.” He shot me a look. “What are you talking of, with your tamarind seeds? I know nothing of them, tho’ my sister and parent obviously do.”

“Were you not present when the footman presented a gift to Mrs. MacCallister, in a silken pouch, in the midst of the ball? He had received it of a stranger—a common enough looking fellow, I believe he said—at the Castle’s front door.”

“When was this?” Thane demanded.

“During Andrew’s toast,” Adelaide supplied faintly.

“Ah. I was from the ballroom at the time—and returned only as the glasses were raised. A silken pouch, you say?”

“Inside was a collection of largish brown beans,” I explained. “Or so I thought them to be. Mrs. MacCallister received them with little pleasure.”

Thane crossed to Adelaide, and stared at her broodingly. “You told me nothing of this.”

“I thought it irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant, Addie! Fiske sends you his calling card—”

“Enough, Julian!” Mrs. Thane bellowed.

“It was only later,” I persisted, “when we discovered a similar bean in Mr. Fiske’s pocket, that the coroner explained to me what it was.”

“Curzon had a tamarind seed in his pocket?” Adelaide repeated. “I suppose it slipped from the pouch. It must have been he, then, who stood at the Castle’s door. Oh, Julian!” She covered her face with her hands. “Only consider of it! Standing alone and friendless in the dark, while his wife wedded another!”

“The seed did not slip from the pouch,” I said.

Adelaide lifted her head from her hands and stared at me. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Because it was twisted inside the note that summoned him to his death,” I explained. “A sort of token—perhaps that he might put faith in his murderer?”

Her dark eyes were wide and pitiful in her pale face, all hint of gaiety vanished; and her brother, for the moment, was deprived of speech.

Our interrogation had reached this interesting point, when Andrew MacCallister entered the room.