Jane and the Canterbury Tale

Chapter Six The Uses of Gossip

21 October 1813, Cont.

Dr. Hamish Bredloe is a scotsman, who learnt his profession in Edinburgh—a very knowledgeable centre of learning, I believe, in matters of natural philosophy. Having established an excellent practice as a physician in London some decades since, he had lately retired to the wealthy environs of Canterbury, and had been burdened with the office of coroner at his own request. At a time in life when a man might be expected to cultivate peace, and bask in the glow of honours accumulated through long years’ acquaintance with the Great, Dr. Bredloe had discovered a restlessness and boredom that might soon have killed him, had he not devoted his energies to the determination of Manners of Death, and the inveighing against Misadventure, Malice Aforethought, and Person or Persons Unknown. An interest in the sordid and the low may not have won him numerous invitations to dine among the great houses of Kent; but it had rendered him invaluable to gentlemen like Edward—who were charged with the maintenance of justice, and took that charge in all seriousness. Edward regarded Dr. Bredloe as a man possessed of the keenest understanding, and one whose good opinion he would not lightly foreswear. Hence his utter abhorrence of Mr. Moore’s proposals, regarding a conspiracy of silence; Edward should never attempt to suborn the coroner, as he must undoubtedly have done had he acceded to the clergyman’s scheme.

Mr. Moore was not to be discovered above-stairs, and had perhaps sought reflection in his wife’s company, or in guiding his young son through a lesson in Greek, as I had observed he was wont to do when the desire for mastery was firmly upon him. Edward was able, therefore, to conduct Dr. Bredloe to the body at once—explaining, as he did so, the curious circumstance of the gentleman’s identity.

Beyond curtseying at Dr. Bredloe’s observance, and bridling a little under his sharp glance, I did not hover in the coroner’s vicinity. He would undoubtedly wish to disrobe the corpse, and there could be no cause for my observance of such an examination; I was content to learn the doctor’s conclusions once he had regained Edward’s book room, and was established over a glass of Madeira.

In the meantime, I sought out my niece Fanny.

I found her standing distractedly in the little saloon at the rear of the house, arranging a posy of late summer flowers that must have come from a succession-house, for none of Godmersham’s blooms had survived the relentless chill rains.

“Aren’t they lovely, Aunt?” she murmured, her cheeks aflame. “Mr. Thane has been so kind as to send them from Chilham. He knows nothing of our sad business here—reflects only on the gaieties of last evening, poor fellow! What a shock it shall be to him, when he hears!”

Mr. Thane, offering a tribute of flowers to a lady, the morning after a ball. The Regency Buck was up to every trick, and should never be backwards in any attention—my dear Fanny’s head was certain to be turned. She could not leave off admiring her flowers, though a nuncheon had been thoughtfully laid out upon a sideboard: sliced apples, a large cheese, cold ham and tongue, and a platter of sausages with the special mustard for which Mrs. Driver is famous.

Of the gentlemen, my nephew George, Jupiter Finch-Hatton, and Mr. Lushington—I had forgot to mention Mr. Lushington, but shall explain him presently—were to be seen; the rest of the shooting-party, Fanny informed me, were hanging over Mr. James Wildman as he attempted to craft his delicate missive to his cousin Adelaide.

“Tho’ ten to one they are merely disturbing his train of thought, and causing him to blot his copy,” Finch-Hatton observed with a yawn. “I declined to make another of such a great passel of boobies.”

“Mr. Plumptre might be of signal assistance,” Fanny retorted, her eyes flashing, “for he is a very learned young man, I believe, and devotes considerable hours to questions of philosophy.”

“—Sure to drive poor Mrs. MacCallister into strong hysterics, then,” Finch-Hatton rejoined, “and make a vile situation entirely desperate. Plumptre was never such a dead bore when he was living in Kent—I declare that Oxford has much to answer for, when unexceptionable young men are turned prosy and prudish, and all from reading too much in books. Ought to be outlawed, in my opinion.”

Mr. Lushington burst out in laughter at this sally, and speared a sausage with a convenient knife. “Good God, George,” he said—meaning Mr. Finch-Hatton, not my young nephew; there are no less than four Georges at Godmersham at present. “A few more books might render your conversation bearable—to me as well as to the ladies. Any more of it, I warn you, and I’ll pack you off to Oxford myself—tho’ you are several years past your scholarly prime.”

Mr. Stephen Rumbold Lushington is an excellent man, all smiling, wide teeth, and good address; he is our Member of Parliament for Canterbury, and is, I daresay, ambitious and insincere—your short men often are—but he speaks so well of Milton, when he has a volume of the master in his hands, that I am a little in love with him, despite his being a year younger than myself and already married these fifteen years at least. And why is Mr. Lushington staying the night at Godmersham, one may ask? Because in this house there is a constant succession of small events; somebody is always going or coming. The world entire walks in and out of my brother Edward’s doors and heartily consents to remain for dinner. Mr. Lushington, besides being our MP, is also Manager of the Lodge Hounds; he came to talk of fox hunting with young Edward, and shall be leaving us one day or another. I shall make good use of him before he goes, however, for I mean to get a frank for my letter to Cassandra—if ever I find a moment to sit down and write it[3].

“Is it true, Aunt, that the dead pilgrim is really Curzon Fiske?” George demanded breathlessly. He was, after all, but seventeen—and tho’ much inclined to ape Jupiter’s affectations, and in awe of Mr. Lushington, he could not mask avidity with studied indifference.

“So it would seem. Your father, I am sure, shall tell you all about it.”

“Dashed smoky affair,” Mr. Lushington remarked briskly. “But Mr. Knight shall sort it all out for the rest of us, I am sure.”

“Were you at all acquainted with Mr. Fiske in former years, sir?” I asked.

He appeared to hesitate, tho’ perhaps he was merely digesting his sausage. “I suppose I knew him a little, but very long ago, I’m afraid. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learnt he had been found but a stone’s throw from this door—and dead yet again!”

“Poor Mrs. MacCallister,” murmured Fanny in my ear. “To think that she was married to the Captain in all innocence—and that the union is now thrown under a cloud! How unkind is Fate! I have been turning it over in my mind all morning—and am so troubled in spirit I declare I have not been able to swallow a mouthful! Every feeling revolts at the sight of food, when such tragedy oppresses the soul!”

“Then I am certain I possess not the slightest sensibility at all,” I told her mildly, “for I have never sat down to breakfast—and am utterly famished! I shall certainly carve myself a slice of ham, and perhaps some cheese, and if Mrs. Driver can discover one of Cook’s apple tarts hiding in the larder, I may be so bold as to request a slice, with a strong pot of tea. If events continue as they have begun, my dear Fanny, we are all of us likely to miss dinner, as well—so pray force yourself to whatever you find least disgusting, lest you faint dead away upon a sopha.”

“The sausages are excellent,” Mr. Lushington observed.

“Made of pheasant,” Jupiter Finch-Hatton added with a roguish look, “tho’ not the ones we bagged this morning.”

“Pheasant,” Fanny whispered with revulsion, the circumstances of Mr. Fiske’s discovery no doubt rising in her mind. “How can you speak so, Mr. Finch-Hatton, when a man lies dead but one floor below?”

“Now, don’t go all missish on me, Fanny.” He pierced a slice of apple with an idle fork, and offered it to her with a bow. “Man’s been dead for years, after all—or as good as.”

“But only consider of the anxieties that must attend this dreadful news among all those who remain at Chilham Castle,” she returned in a trembling accent. “Mrs. Thane, for instance, and … and … young Mr. Thane, both of whom must feel so deeply for Mrs. MacCallister in the present case—do you not think, Aunt, that it is our duty to accompany Mr. Wildman when he returns home, to condole with all his relations? We might be able to assure them, from our hearts, that every proper observance is being accorded to the unfortunate Mr. Fiske’s remains.”

As I wished very much to observe the effect of the unfortunate Mr. Fiske’s second death upon those most nearly related to him, I was on the point of adopting Fanny’s scheme; but I required rather more of the late gentleman’s history first.

“My dear girl,” I suggested, “you are looking decidedly unwell. Let us send the gentlemen back to their billiards, until such time as the coroner is able to hear their story of the morning’s events—while you and I repair to your boudoir. We might have our tea and apple tart brought up at once, and consume them there in peace.”

“I assure you, I could not swallow a mouthful!”

“Fanny, I should like to have a word with you in private.”

As one of my speaking looks attended these words, her indignant expression faded. “Very well, Aunt. I do admit to wanting my tea.” She ignored Mr. Finch-Hatton’s speared apple, sweeping by that cosseted gentleman with a scornful look that quite astonished him. “George, do pray challenge Mr. Finch-Hatton and Mr. Lushington to a game—and mind,” she added in a lowered tone as she passed her brother, “that you trounce Jupiter soundly.”

“Now,” I said once we were settled by a brisk fire in the comfortable sitting room Edward had made over for his eldest daughter’s comfort, and which had been freshened with paint and hung with gaily-flowered paper during her absence that summer, “tell me everything you know of Curzon Fiske and Adelaide Thane.”

Fanny’s generally placid countenance was suffused in an instant with a wary aspect. “I did not take you for a common gossip, Aunt Jane.”

“Nonsense! You have been in receipt of my letters your whole life—and they are never filled with anything else! Very amusing, too, I daresay you find them. Do not be a hypocrite, Fanny. I cannot admire Jupiter Finch-Hatton, but I confess in this we are in agreement—missishness does not suit you.”

My niece flushed. “It is because of such creatures as Finch-Hatton and the rest that I was determined never to canvass all that old business—when Mrs. MacCallister is so happy, and so blessed, in her present choice. If you knew the avid looks and whispered slander that have followed her, even in the weeks preceding her wedding-party … I should never willingly add to so vile a chorus.”

“And I commend you for it. But do consider, you pea-goose, how strident the chorus shall become when the lady—or her husband—or perhaps, even, her brother—is taken up by your excellent father for murder.”

“What?” Fanny reared up from the sopha in dismay, and whirled upon me like a tigress. “You cannot mean it! None of the Thanes—and neither of the MacCallisters—was of the shooting-party this morning! You might as well accuse my brother Edward, or Jupiter himself!”

“I might, had Mr. Fiske been shot by a fowling piece in the middle of a crowd of beaters and dogs—but he was not, Fanny. He was murdered in cold blood in the dead of night, probably by a duelling pistol at close range. Or so I suspect the excellent Dr. Bredloe shall soon inform us.”

I took a sip of tea to allow her time to clamber down from her high horse. “I observed the black marks of powder discharged upon the man’s coat. He was certainly standing within inches of the person who killed him, and his belongings were tidily stowed to one side of the path—which suggests that he both knew his murderer, and was expecting to meet that person exactly where we found his body at about eleven o’clock this morning.”

“Good Lord,” Fanny said faintly, and sank back down upon the sopha.

“I am not an intimate of Kentish society, as you know.” Cook’s apple tart, I discovered, was unequal to the one my friend Martha Lloyd was in the habit of making, but was commendable nonetheless. “I have not been among you, indeed, in some four years. Adelaide Fiske, neé Thane, was an utter stranger to me before she proceeded down the aisle of Mr. Tylden’s church—and her first husband I do not recollect ever having met at all. I have heard some of the gossip you mention, of course—your young friends Sophia Deedes and her sisters were at it, hammer and tongs, even during last night’s ball—but I should far prefer a more sober history, delivered by yourself.”

“But you cannot truly believe it possible that someone we know—someone, perhaps, that I even danced with—could be capable of shedding an innocent man’s blood?”

Ah. The shadow of Julian Thane’s compelling countenance had slipped between us.

“I think it unlikely in the extreme that Mr. Fiske was killed by a stranger to himself,” I told my niece. “Beyond that, I may speculate nothing. Only consider, Fanny, how odd it is that he should appear in the neighbourhood of Chilham, on the very night of his wife’s second marriage … an event that he could have thrown into chaos.”

“—Had he known of it,” she pointed out. “We cannot be certain he was even aware of the festivities at Chilham. Had he been, should he not have exerted himself to halt so bigamous a proceeding? Aunt Jane! Can you believe it possible that any gentleman should behave otherwise? No, no! You throw everything that is right and good into disorder, and by so doing, force all the parties concerned to behave in the most awkward and extraordinary fashion! Surely there is a more rational, and simpler, explanation?”

Poor Fanny. She had much to learn of the world, if she believed that all about her were right and good, and the reverse extraordinary. But I said only, “Murder has the effect of twisting awry what once appeared to be order. I cannot begin to conjecture what occurred in Mr. Fiske’s case—who might be embroiled, and whom we may place entirely in the clear—until I know more of the man and his history.”

Fanny drew breath, and studied my countenance for the space of several heartbeats. “You are a formidable lady, are you not, Aunt Jane?” she asked wistfully. “When I was a child, I was used to think you were like a good faerie—always dropping out of the sky with your delightful stories, and the dolls-clothes you embroidered so neatly; playing at cricket regardless of the stains the lawn left on your dress, and teaching the little ones to toss spillikins. It is only now I am grown older—and have been privileged to read your novels, and apprehend the subtlety of your observations—that I know how cold a reason you command.”

“I shall chuse to take that as a compliment.” I set down my tea, which was growing tepid despite the warmth of the fire. “Cold reason may be a useful tool, Fanny, in your father’s pursuit of justice; for make no mistake, he shall pursue it, whichever one of his neighbours he must force into a noose. As he said only this morning, Curzon Fiske was a Kentishman, and deserves his measure of English law—no matter how depraved his past life may have been, or how justly his murderer regarded the taking of such a life. You may help me, or no; but in helping me, you may save one of your friends from all the calamity of an unjust accusation.”

“Or tie a rope around his neck,” she said grimly. “This is serious speaking, indeed. Very well—I shall tell you what I know, but let it be understood, Aunt Jane, that I was a child when Adelaide Thane consented to be Fiske’s bride, and but seventeen when that gentleman fled England. He is so much older than the fellows of our set—I daresay he was almost elderly, nearly Papa’s age!—that I was never acquainted with him myself. Much of what I have learnt, therefore, has been taught at second-hand. Partial as the intelligence may be, however, I shall make you a gift of it.”