Jane and the Canterbury Tale

Chapter Twenty-Four An Affair of Honour

Tuesday, 26 October 1813

Edward was gone before first light, posting towards London in his travelling-coach. He intends to put up this evening in Henry’s rooms, over the bank in Henrietta Street, where our brother has lived in bachelor splendour since the sad event of last spring.[11] Edward hopes to be returned by the morrow, as his sons depart for Oxford Thursday and the Moores—God be praised!—are also to take themselves off that morning; but if his business in London does not prosper and he finds himself delayed, he has begged Young Edward and George to put off their plan of travel until Friday. I noticed that he forebore to press Mr. Moore to do the same.

The young gentlemen are used enough to the claims of business in their father’s life to make this present freak—as I am sure they regard it—nothing out of the common way; and as the shooting continues fine, and Jupiter Finch-Hatton is available at any hour to play at billiards, or make another at cards, or to ride out with them on one of their gallops, they appear resigned to passing the remainder of the week at Godmersham, with tolerable composure.

Miss Clewes was agog to know what could possibly draw Mr. Knight to London, such a little while after our passage through the Metropolis on our way from Chawton this past September; and not all the conjectures the governess and Harriot could suggest between them, sufficed to settle the matter. Harriot was a little put out that no warning of the trip had been given, that she might have charged Edward with myriad commissions in Town—to be achieved, no doubt, on credit—but Fanny preserved a noble indifference to her father’s schemes, sipping her tea with composure in the breakfast-parlour and enquiring of me only, with a sardonic look, if I intended any secret errands throughout the course of the morning.

I replied in good conscience that I had nothing greater in view than a vigourous climb up into the Downs, if she wished to accompany me; and at Jupiter’s happening to overlisten our conversation, it was presently agreed that we should stay only to don our bonnets and pelisses, before setting out for our walk with Mr. Finch-Hatton as escort. To my relief, Harriot declared herself fatigued after her errand in Canterbury the previous day, and preferred to bear Miss Clewes company in the nursery-wing, sorting Young George’s small-clothes for laundering in preparation for the journey home. I intended to profit by my interlude with Mr. Finch-Hatton; and while I should not hesitate to put questions before Fanny, Harriot should have been a decided impediment to frank and easy conversation, as it was chiefly regarding her husband I wished to query Jupiter. I had not forgot George Moore’s presence at the interesting whist-party, on the night of Curzon Fiske’s flight from England; nor his dispute with Mr. Stephen Lushington, MP, at our own dining table; nor the matter of packets of gold, despatched to unknown points on the Subcontinent. For a man already in the habit of hiding so much, a mere murder seemed an incidental addition.

Jupiter whistled for one of the dogs—a spaniel of George’s called Frisk—and swung a stylish ebony stick in his gloved hand; he was the picture of an elegant Bond Street Stroller, complete to a shade, for all he went in breeches and top boots. One look at his gold locks tucked beneath his curly-brimmed beaver, one glance from his bold blue eyes, one thought of the earldom that might eventually be his—and I grasped quite fully why even Fanny could not be entirely indifferent to him.

“Are you quite certain you wish to attempt the path along the Downs, Aunt?” Fanny enquired, with a doubtful look at the clouds gathering above the hills.

“I am afraid no other way will serve, my dear. It must be the Downs or nothing.”

She looked at me sidelong. “And do you intend to walk all the way to Chilham Castle?”

“Not if I discover what I hope to find, before we reach it,” I returned calmly.

“Lord! Are we hunting for clews, then?” Jupiter chortled. “It makes a dashed good change from billiards, I assure you. Only tell me what you seek, ma’am, and I shall train my full attention on the ground!”

“I am hoping the dog may nose out something for us,” I said as Frisk’s waving brush disappeared into the under-growth at one side of the path. “A piece of cloth, perhaps, torn from a cloak; a few strands of horsehair pulled from a passing mount.”

“But surely any idle walker might leave such things behind him, Aunt,” Fanny said in puzzlement, “without them being decidedly a token of Fiske’s murderer.”

She is hardly lacking in sense, our Fanny; but I adopted an airy tone.

“To be sure, my dear. But it is equally possible we may discover something decisive.”

“Such as … another pistol, tossed into the bracken, that does not belong to James Wildman at all,” Jupiter suggested.

I studied his indolent countenance, so deceptive in its blandness. So the pistol had been troubling Mr. Finch-Hatton too. Perhaps our conversation in the breakfast-parlour yesterday had given him to think.

The pleasure gardens behind the house gave way to a walled kitchen garden, which amply supplied the Godmersham table three-quarters of the year; and I might have lingered there on a different morning, to indulge a few melancholy thoughts on the relentless march of Time, amidst the leafless espaliered fruit trees. This morning, however, mindful of the impending rain—is there any season so wet as Autumn in Kent?—I trod purposefully forward, Fanny keeping pace beside me, with Mr. Finch-Hatton at her elbow. He whistled a little tunelessly under his breath as he strode along, slashing at the dead grasses with his ebony stick.

“I have been considering of James Wildman’s pistol,” I mused as the ground began its gradual ascent and our pleasant saunter became an uphill toil. Below us, Edward’s sheep dotted the grass like so much cloud come to ground. “If we are agreed—as I believe we must be—that Adelaide MacCallister is the last person who should have wished to incriminate her cousin, we must endeavour to put our heads together, Mr. Finch-Hatton, and discover who did. You know the gentleman far better than I, or even Fanny—what is your opinion on the subject? Does Mr. Wildman attract enemies, as a jam-pot attracts bees?”

“James?” Jupiter replied incredulously. “Attract enemies? I should say not! James, who was never an Out-and-Outer, nor Top-’o-the-Trees, much less a Rake-shame or a Loose Screw! No, no—he’s far too good ton for anyone to come the ugly with James!”

“In other words—if I apprehend your cant correctly—Mr. Wildman’s character and way of life are far too unobjectionable to excite either the envy or the hatred that a nonpareil of Fashion, or a reprehensible scoundrel, should certainly inspire.”

“That’s it,” Jupiter said gratefully. “Hasn’t an enemy in the world, our James.”

“And yet, someone deliberately left his pistol at a scene of murder. How is it that a man without enemies is positioned so neatly for the scaffold, Mr. Finch-Hatton?”

Fanny snorted, an indecorous sound that might have been a swallowed giggle. Tho’ she was the sort who spoke most often only when she was spoken to—particularly among gentlemen, whom she had been trained foolishly to regard as leaders to be followed, rather than small boys to be led—she did appreciate a deft exchange of views, and the occasional triumph of her aunt.

“Does leave one in a coil, don’t it?” Jupiter agreed affably. “Nasty, slippery articles, facts.”

“I believe the coil might be cut, however, did we consider of the relations between Curzon Fiske and James Wildman,” I suggested. “Mr. Wildman insists he was in happy ignorance of Fiske’s survival, when that unfortunate man found his way to Chilham last Wednesday; and as Fiske was unknown in England for fully three years—we must cast our minds back to that fatal night, when James Wildman admits to having last seen Fiske: The night the gentleman was forced to flee the Kingdom. There was a game of whist played that evening, I believe? For odiously high stakes? And you were present, were you not, Mr. Finch-Hatton?”

Jupiter stopped short on the path. He studied me through narrowed eyes. “I was,” he said tersely, “but if you may tell me how you got wind of such a devilish affair, I’d be much obliged to you, ma’am. I should like to have it out with the bounder who saw fit to share what should never have reached a lady’s ears!”

“It was Fanny who told me of it,” I replied.

“Aunt Jane!” Fanny cried in outrage.

“Do not attempt to deny it! We must disabuse Mr. Finch-Hatton of his misapprehension, my dear—that the whist game is in some wise a closely-guarded secret—for if you know of it, Fanny, we may be assured that most of Kent does, as well.”

“Damme,” Jupiter muttered, and lopped a thistle from its stalk with a single murderous stroke of his cane.

As we laboured up the pitch of the downs, and the weak Autumn light was gradually blotted out by cloud, I succeeded in dragging intelligence most unwillingly from Jupiter’s disapproving mind. To relate the essentials of what he termed “a dashed smoky business” to two unmarried ladies obviously offended his notions of decorum. The discovery that he actually possessed such nice sensibilities so raised Jupiter in Fanny’s estimation, that by the end of his recital the two were conversing quite animatedly.

“We were all at Chilham Castle for a visit that November, one of James’s sisters—never can tell one from the other—being on the point of coming out, and the Wildmans thinking to show her off round Kent before the London Season began, just to see how the chit took. Neither of ’em ever did take, come to that,” Jupiter added thoughtfully, “but can’t blame James’s mamma for trying! I mean to say—two such antidotes on her hands, and the eldest of ’em past praying for! In any event, there was a dress party. —Believe you were indisposed, Miss Fanny. Accounts for you not being one of the party.”

“All the children had scarlet fever,” my niece murmured, “and naturally I could not carry contagion into Louisa’s coming-out party.”

“We’d just dined—twenty couple or so, m’mother and sister and m’father in attendance, along with the Moores and the Plumptres and I know not who else—”

“Mr. Lushington and his wife, perhaps?” I prompted.

“Aye,” Jupiter said darkly, “and that chit of theirs, Mary-Ann, who’s forever setting her cap at James, for all she’s not yet fifteen.”

“Is she, indeed?” Fanny enquired with interest. “I had thought her still in the schoolroom!”

“Ought to have been, that night—what Lushington was thinking, bringing a child no more than twelve to dinner, I should have liked to have asked him—but that’s neither here nor there.” Jupiter stabbed his stick into the soft earth with every step. “As I say, we were coming out of the dining parlour, intending to get up a bit of a dance—you know the sort of thing, Fanny, most informal and dashed tedious, my opinion, but nothing for it—girl’s coming-out party, after all—when there was a great pounding at the front door, and the peal of the bell, and that quiz they keep for a butler at Chilham—”

“Twitch.”

“—the very one!—threw open the front door. There was Fiske and little Adelaide, looking as tho’ she might faint at our feet, and practically stumbling to get inside. ‘Oh, cousin!’ she cried to James’s papa, ‘the bailiffs are at the door, and we are lost, and if you are not kind to us, cousin, I do not know what we shall do!’ Never seen a lady so torn with anxiety as Adelaide was that night—and her increasing, worse luck.”

“Increasing?” I repeated, quite startled. “I had not an idea of it. No one has mentioned a child.”

“Lost it,” Jupiter said significantly, with a tentative eye towards Fanny. “Miscarried, soon as Fiske took off without a word to anyone the next day. Kept the matter quite close at Chilham, it being but another tragedy in Mrs. Fiske’s life.”

“I see. Mr. Wildman took them in, of course?”

“Sent Adelaide straight upstairs with his wife, and shut Fiske into the library with a bottle of his best claret. Probably hopeful the damned fellow would drink himself senseless and leave the party in peace. Wildman urged us into the ballroom—you’ve seen it yourself, Miss Austen, so no need to recite the particulars—and we made a poor show of dancing, but the talk that flew round the couples was like nothing on earth. Any number decided to depart quite early, and made their excuses to James’s mamma, once she appeared back downstairs. It was a sad end to their chit’s coming out, and I daresay the girl holds it against Adelaide to this day.”

“But you remained.”

Jupiter shrugged. “Been invited to stay. Traps all unpacked in the best bedrooms. M’mother and father yawning their heads off, sister determined to seek her bed. I repaired to the library with James and Plumptre and a few others, and we found Fiske in a feverish state—the wine having done its work. Another man would have been snoring on the floor, but not Fiske. He was game for anything. Demanded we play whist, for pound points. James tried to reason with him—we were all aware the fellow’s pockets were entirely to let, and he had no business playing on tick when the blunt to settle his debts should undoubtedly come from Old Wildman’s purse—but Fiske would have none of it. Jeered at James, and called him a stripling too callow to play a man’s game. Well, must tell you that Plumptre and I fired up at such Turkish treatment! James was no more a stripling than ourselves—well, perhaps Plumptre was full young to be laying down his quarterly allowance in such a cause, being then not above eighteen; but he knew what it meant to stand buff for James, and sat down at the whist table he did.”

Now Jupiter was coming to it. I slowed my footsteps as we achieved a plateau in the Downs, a slight shelf in the continual rise, and paused to survey the view. Edward’s is a splendid fall of country, the house situated in a valley between two hills, and the Stour winding below; it was difficult to believe that so frightful an event as murder could occur amidst such peace.

“Mr. Moore and Mr. Lushington sat down as well, I collect?”

“Not to play, whist being a game for four hands—but the prosy old parson and the gabster from Parliament thought to keep a stern eye on the doings—it being plain as a pikestaff Fiske meant to pluck us all! I mean to say—fellow’d been a Master Sharp for years, ran gaming hells on the Continent, stood to reason he took us for a bunch of flats! He meant to fuzz the cards, I daresay, and clear out of England plumper in the pocket than he’d arrived at Chilham that night!”

“And did he?”

Jupiter shrugged. “Curiously enough, Fiske was badly dipped by the time he broached his third bottle. James and Plumptre and I decided between us to take our winnings, and politely toddle off to bed—but Fiske would have none of it. Demanded another round. Meant to win his own back, I gather, tho’ as he’d nothing to pledge, it was hard to see how he meant to come about. James was fool enough to mention the point—in the most circumspect way, ’course—but Fiske told him to go to the Devil. And then the fellow dealt us a leveller—”

“A what?” Fanny demanded with knitted brows.

“That is boxing cant, my dear,” I informed her. “It signifies a stunning blow.”

“Up to every rig, ain’t you, Miss Austen? Nothing a fellow can’t say to you. Friend Curzon floored us, to be frank,” Jupiter affirmed. “Having not a feather to fly with—Fiske tossed his wife into the pot, and invited any who was man enough, to play for her.”