Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

Chapter 25 The Rogue’s Toss

Saturday, 5 November 1808

The inquest into the death of Flora Bastable was to be held at two o’clock today at the Coach & Horses Inn.

“Another murder, Jane!” my mother cried. “And why must you go traipsing about the town in search of sensation, merely because a serving-girl has got her throat slit? You had much better remain at home, in expectation of a call from Lord Harold. I am amply supplied with brandy at present.”

I had said nothing of the duel, or my earlymorning jaunt yesterday in Frank’s company to Butlock Common; and the three-quarters of an hour required for our return trip along the Netley roads had so restored our sensibilities that we might face our relations without the slightest evidence of deceit.

At our return to Castle Square, at half-past seven o’clock, nobody else in the house was even stirring — but for Phebe in the kitchen. I found to my consternation that my hands would not cease shaking, and my brother’s countenance was unwontedly grave. Frank and I fortified ourselves silently with fresh coffee and bread, and greeted the others in their descent from the bedchambers with the virtuous air belonging to all early risers.

Neither my mother’s protests, therefore, nor Martha’s anxiety, nor my fear of public display could prevent me from attending the coroner’s panel.

“The maid was in service at Netley Lodge, Mamma,” I told her mildly, “and her death must cause considerable discomfort in Mrs. Challoner’s breast. I should not consider myself a true friend, did I fail to lend support at such an hour.”

My mother declared that if I was determined to make a cake of myself, then she utterly washed her hands of me. My brother Frank said instantly, however, that he would bear me company — and dear Mary confessed herself glad of his decision, in a gentle aside she imparted in the upstairs hall.

“Frank is so restless when he is turned ashore, Jane, that I declare I can do nothing with him! Better that he should enjoy an hour of freedom about the town, and interest himself in all the doings of Southampton, than rebuke poor little Mary Jane for her irrepressible spirits.”

I thoroughly agreed. At a quarter to the hour, therefore, I left Mamma prostrate in her bedchamber, smelling salts at hand, while I tied my bonnet strings unsteadily in the hall. I had not slept for most of the night, nor had I eaten more than a square of bread all day; I was in dreadful looks. I had considered of Lord Harold’s parting remark— provided I am at liberty so long—and concluded that he expected to be charged with murder. I understood the painful course his thoughts had taken. He did not like to admit to an affair of honour, which the law must frown upon; he refused to implicate Mr. Ord in a matter of bloodshed; and he hoped to shield me, my brother, and Dr. Jarvey, who had attended the meeting in good faith. Therefore, he was left with but a single course: to inform the authorities that he had discovered the girl’s corpse himself, in an isolated field, at half-past six o’clock in the morning. It was an unenviable position; but one from which Lord Harold was unlikely to shrink. Ever the gambler — and man of honour — he should surely cast his fate upon the toss of a die.

“But why?” I demanded of my reflection. “Why must he bear the weight of so heinous a crime, and not Sophia Challoner?”

“Are you ready, Jane?”

Frank wore his full dress uniform, complete with cockade, to lend the proceedings an air of dignity.

“You should not attempt to bear me company,” I warned him. “You will hear vile things said about everybody. It is the general rule of inquests, to contribute everything to rumour, and nothing to justice.”

“You make it sound worse than the Royal Navy,” he observed mildly.

The small dining parlour in the Coach & Horses was usually bespoken for dinner by wealthy merchants in the India trade, who put up at the inn while en route from London to Southampton. It was chock-a-block with local faces by five minutes before two: seamen reddened with exposure to the elements, retired officers of the Royal Navy, a few tradesmen I recognised from shops along the High. Frank bowed left and right to his large acquaintance, but kept a weather eye on me. My brother’s countenance was composed and unsmiling: much, I suspected, as he might enter into battle.

Of Sophia Challoner there was no sign, nor of Mr. Ord; the entire Netley party had dignified the inquest by their absence. Lord Harold was seated near the front of the room, his valet at his side, but both were so sober in their mien, that neither turned his head to notice our entrance. The press of folk was so great, I did not like to force my way forward. Frank cast about for seats to the rear, and several men claimed the honour of offering theirs to me. One of them was Jeb Hawkins.

The Bosun’s Mate pulled his forelock in my brother’s direction, and received a sturdy clap on the shoulder; they had long been acquainted, and knew each other’s worth. “This is a rum business, miss, and no mistake! Poor old Ned Bastable! His granddaughter served out like that — I’ve never seen Ned so shaken, not even when the French took his right leg with a ball!”

I grasped his rough hand in my gloved one. “It gives me strength to see you here, Mr. Hawkins.”

He harrumphed, and cast his eyes to the floor. At that moment, the coroner thrust his way to the front of the room and took up a position behind a broad deal table, much scarred from the rings of tankards.

“That’ll be Crowse,” whispered the Bosun’s Mate knowledgeably. “Not a bad sort, though hardly out of leading-strings.”

A hammer fell, a bailiff cried, and all in the assembly rose. “The coroner summons Mr. Percival Pethering to the box!”

Frank snorted in derision beside me.

Percival Pethering was a magistrate of Southampton — a pale and languid article, foppishly dressed. His great height and extreme thinness made of his figure a perpetual question mark. Stringy grey hair curled over his forehead, and his teeth — which were very bad — protruded like a nag’s of uncertain breeding. He seated himself at the coroner’s right hand, and took a pinch of snuff from a box he kept tucked into his coat.

The mixture must have been excessively strong: he sneezed, dusting powder over the leaves of paper on which the coroner’s scribe kept his notations.

“Mr. Pethering?”

“At your service, Mr. Crowse.” The magistrate pressed a handkerchief to his nose.

“You are magistrate of Southampton, I believe?”

“And hold my commission at the pleasure of Lord Abercrombie, Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire.”

“Indeed. And you have been in the commission of the peace how long?”

“Full fourteen years this past July seventeenth.”

“Very well. Pray tell the jury here impaneled, Mr. Pethering, how you came to learn of this sad case.”

The magistrate grimaced at the twelve men arranged awkwardly on two of the publican’s sturdy benches, and tucked his handkerchief into his sleeve.

“A sad case, indeed. One might even say a gruesome, not to mention a shocking business, had one less experience of the cruelty of the world in general than I have, and the depravity of the Great—”

“The facts, Mr. Pethering,” the coroner interrupted impatiently.

“Certainly, Mr. Crowse. I had just sat down to my breakfast yesterday — no later than seven o’clock, as is my custom — when a messenger arrived from the village of Hound, crying out that murder had been done, and I must come at once.”

A murmur of excited comment rippled like a breeze through the assembly, and Mr. Crowse let his hammer fall. “Murder is a word grossly prejudicial to this proceeding, sir. Pray let us hear no more of it until the panel has delivered its verdict.”

“Very well. I undertook to accompany the man — valet to Lord Harold Trowbridge — to the cottage of old Ned Bastable in Hound. There I found Dr. Hugh Jarvey, physician of this city, and Lord Harold — a gentleman of London presently putting up at the Dolphin — who had discovered the corpus of a young girl on Butlock Common earlier that morning.”

“And what did you then?” Mr. Crowse enquired.

“I examined the corpus, as requested by Dr. Jarvey, and agreed that the maid — Flora Bastable, by name, old Ned’s granddaughter — had died of a mortal wound to the throat. I informed the coroner that an inquest should be necessary, and arranged for the conveyance of the girl’s body here to the Coach & Horses.”

“Thank you, sir — that will be all.”

Mr. Pethering stepped down. “The coroner calls Lord Harold Trowbridge!”

I discerned his figure immediately: straight and elegant, arrayed in black, striding calmly down the central aisle. His countenance was cool and impassive as ever; he looked neither to right nor left. Mr. Crowse, the coroner, might have been the only other person in the room.

“Pray take a chair, my lord,” Crowse said brusquely, “and place your right hand on the Bible.”

He swore to God that he should speak only the truth, and gazed out clearly over the ranks of townspeople arrayed to hear him. He espied my brother Frank, and the corners of his mouth lifted; his eyes settled on my face. I am sure I looked ghastly — too pale above my black gown, my features pinched and aged. For an instant I read his disquiet in his looks, and then the grey gaze moved on.

“You have stated that you are Lord Harold Trowbridge, of No. 51 South Audley Street, London?”

“I am.”

“Will you inform the panel of the business that brings you to this city, my lord?”

“Certainly. I have a considerable fortune invested in shares of the Honourable East India Company, and have been in daily expectation of the arrival of a particular ship out of Bombay — the Rose of Hin- doostan.” His lordship drew off his black gloves. Mr. Crowse raised an eyebrow. “I observe, my lord, that you are presently in mourning?”

“My mother, the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough, lately passed from this life.”

“Pray accept my condolences. She was interred, I believe, only a few days since? Surely your man of business might deal with an Indiaman at such a time, rather than yourself?”

“I employ no man of business, Mr. Crowse; and I fail to comprehend what my affairs have to do with the subject of your inquest.”

“Very well, my lord. Will you tell the members of the panel here convened, how you came to be at Butlock Common yesterday morning?”

I held my breath. Would he admit to the affair of honour?

“I had arranged to meet an old friend of mine — Dr. Jarvey, of East Street — in order to take a ramble about the countryside,” he said tranquilly.

My heart sank. Lord Harold meant to bear the full brunt of suspicion.

“A ramble?” the coroner repeated in surprise.

“Yes. We are both of us fond of walking.”

“You are presently lodging at the Dolphin, are you not, my lord?”

“I am.”

“And Dr. Jarvey, as you say, resides in East Street?”

“He does.”

“Then would you be so good as to explain why you chose to meet over four miles from the town, in an isolated field, where a corpse happened to be lying?”

“We had a great desire to view the tumuli at Netley Common, nearly two miles distant, and thought that Butlock Common should make an excellent starting point. One might wander through Prior’s Coppice along the way; it is a lovely little wood at this time of year.”

“I see.” Mr. Crowse looked unconvinced. “You arrived well before Dr. Jarvey?”

“Perhaps a quarter of an hour, all told. It was yet dark as I approached the common.”

“And what then occurred?”

“I stepped out of my chaise for a breath of air—

took a turn upon the meadow that borders the lane — and found to my great distress that a young woman had been left for dead upon the ground.”

“Did you recognise the girl?”

“I did. She was serving-maid to an acquaintance of mine, one Mrs. Challoner of Netley Lodge.”

“You had seen her in your visits to the Lodge, I collect?”

Lord Harold shrugged. “One maid is very like another. I recalled, however, that one of them was quite young — and had startling blue eyes. The corpse was similar in these respects.”

“You do not recollect meeting the young woman elsewhere?” Mr. Crowse enquired in a silken tone. Lord Harold hesitated a fraction before answering. “I do not.”

“Very well. What did you next, after discovering the corpse?”

“I ascertained that the young woman was dead; and then returned to my carriage to await the arrival of Dr. Jarvey, as I thought him likely to know best what should be done.”

Mr. Crowse appeared on the point of posing a final question — considered better of it — and said, “You may step down, my lord.”

Lord Harold quitted the chair.

Dr. Jarvey was then called to the stand. He informed the coroner’s panel that he had arrived at Butlock Common yesterday at perhaps half-past six o’clock in the morning, where he had examined the body of a woman discovered upon the ground.

“Her throat had been cut by a sharp blade, severing the principal blood vessels and the windpipe. I should judge the instrument of her death to have been a razor, or perhaps a narrow-bladed knife; the corpus was barely cool, and given the chill of the weather yesterday, I should judge that life had been extinct no more than an hour prior to my arrival.”

“Can you tell the jury, Doctor, why you travelled alone to Butlock Common so early in the morning, and in a hired hack — rather than availing yourself of his lordship’s chaise?”

“A doctor’s hours are not his own,” Dr. Jarvey answered equably. “I cannot be certain, in arranging for activities of this kind, that I may not be called out at the very hour appointed for the meeting, in attendance upon a patient who is gravely ill. I generally chuse to meet my friends, rather than inconvenience them through delay. Therefore, if I am prevented from appearing on the hour, they may pursue their pleasures in solitude.”

Mr. Crowse, the coroner, looked very hard at Dr. Jarvey as he concluded his diffident speech; then he turned to the twelve men of the panel and said, “I must now require you to rise, and accompany me into the side closet, so that you might observe the corpse as is your duty, and testify that life is extinct.”[26]

With varying degrees of alacrity, the panel shuffled from their benches and through the doorway indicated by Mr. Crowse, who waited until the last man had exited the room before closing the door behind the entire party.

A tedious interval ensued, during which Frank shifted in his chair and folded his arms belligerently across his chest. He was uneasy with the degree of duplicity in the proceedings, though I doubted he had perceived its logical end.

The closet door opened, and the men — sober of countenance but in general composed — regained their seats. Mr. Crowse ignored the craning of heads from the assembly as several tried to glimpse what lay beyond the closet door.

“The coroner calls Mrs. Hodgkin!”

A plump, kindly-faced matron in a bottle-green gown with outmoded panniers made her way to the box. She curtseyed, then seated herself stiffly on the edge of the chair.

“You are Elsie Hodgkin?”

“I am. Housekeeper at the Dolphin Inn since I were eighteen year old, and I’m nigh on eight-andforty this Christmas, as I don’t mind saying straight out.”

“Very well,” replied Mr. Crowse. “Please inform the men of the panel what you know of Deceased.”

“She were a lot better acquainted with that there Lord Harold than he’s admitting,” Elsie Hodgkin said immediately. “Two or three times the girl’s come asking for his lordship at the Dolphin, and once she spent an hour or more waiting on his pleasure in our parlour.”

Lord Harold held himself, if possible, more erect in his chair; I had an idea of how his expression should appear — eyes narrowed, every feature stilled.

“Indeed? Have you any notion of the girl’s business?”

“She seemed respectable enough,” the housekeeper said, “but I’m not the sort to send a girl that age into a gentleman’s room for any amount of pleading.”

“Did you observe Lord Harold to meet with Deceased?”

Elsie Hodgkin’s small eyes shifted shrewdly in her face. “Sent that man of his down, he did, to have a word; and I’m that busy, I cannot rightly say whether his lordship followed the valet or not.”

“Do you recall the last time you saw Flora Bastable in the Dolphin?”

“The day before her death,” Mrs. Hodgkin said with relish. “Waited in the parlour, Flora did, while his lordship fired those pistols in the yard, as though he hadn’t left the poor young thing cooling her heels above an hour.”

A murmur of comment stirred the assembly, and I espied a few heads turn in his lordship’s direction.

“Were you aware that Lord Harold quitted the inn quite early yesterday morning?”

“He were gone before I was out of my bed,” she said flatly, “and quiet about it, as though he hoped a body wouldn’t notice. Furtive and stealthy, like.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hodgkin. You may step down. The coroner calls Miss Rose Bastable!”

A frightened young face under a mobcap — a pair of hands twisting in a white apron — and Rose Bastable took her place at Crowse’s right hand. She stared at him fearfully, a sob escaping her lips.

“Now, Rose,” the coroner said gently, “you have lost your sister in the cruelest manner, and that is a dreadful thing. Be a good girl, and tell us what you know.”

“Just that Flora went to that monster, and he were the death of her! I told her not to go — I told her she didn’t ought to meet with strange gentlemen like a coming straw damsel; but she thought to make her fortune, Flora did — and it were her ruin!”

A sigh escaped me — brutal and despairing. What in God’s name had Flora Bastable wanted with Lord Harold, in all those visits to the Dolphin?

And then it came to me. Flora Bastable had never learned her letters. She required someone to write her notes of blackmail to Mrs. Challoner. But why Lord Harold?

“Your sister’s name was Flora Bastable?” Mr. Crowse continued.

Rose nodded from the depths of a crumpled cambric handkerchief. “Sixteen she would’ve been, this January. She were in service at Netley Lodge as housemaid.”

“A boarder?”

“Aye — but Sunday night she come home, dismissed for failing to satisfy. Mrs. Challoner’s a strange woman, and Flora had some tales to tell. She thought the lady might pay for her silence — but the idea weren’t Flora’s own. She’d had it from his lordship.”

“How can you be certain?” Mr. Crowse enquired, leaning forward avidly.

“After dinner that night, Flora told me privatelike as how she had a call to pay in Southampton, on a high-and-mighty lord from Town, and that she thought to make her fortune by it. ‘We’ll never have to fetch and carry again, Rose,’ she said, ‘when I’ve struck my bargain.’ ”

Several ejaculations from the crowd met this declaration.

“Miss Bastable, did you accompany your sister to her meeting with Lord Harold?”

She shook her head.

“Was your sister... a good girl, Miss Bastable?”

“She were an angel,” Rose declared pathetically, “and certainly not the sort to act as she shouldn’t, if she were properly looked after. But some devils will stop at nothing, sir! I begged her not to go back, when the note come from his lordship Thursday!”

I straightened in my chair. Had he written to the child? That must look very bad — Mr. Crowse was frowning at the weeping Rose.

“Pray collect yourself, Miss Bastable. Your sister received a note from Lord Harold Trowbridge?”

“That she did, sir. I read it myself. Asked her, bold as brass, to wait upon his pleasure at Butlock Common just after cock-crow yesterday.”

The public reaction to this intelligence was of an alarming turn. One man actually rose from his seat and cried, “The scoundrel! Hanging’s too good for ’im!”

I whispered agitatedly in Frank’s ear. “The note must be the grossest fabrication! Lord Harold, to my knowledge, had no notion of Flora Bastable’s direction — any more than I did myself!”

“Did your sister keep this letter?” Mr. Crowse demanded of Rose.

“I saw her throw it on the fire. She was afraid, I suppose, that if my mother saw it, she would be forbidden to go.”

“Would that her mother had,” the coroner said heavily. “She might be yet alive today.”

At this, the wilting Rose — who was hardly more than a child herself — cast her face into her hands and wailed aloud. One could not help but feel the deepest pity; and Mr. Crowse, with an air of benevolence quite unsuited to his relative youth, commanded that the proceeding should be adjourned for a period, to allow the young woman to collect her faculties.

Every person in the Coach & Horses, I am sure, must regard such an interlude as unbearable in its suspense. We rose, and watched the panel of twelve directed to an antechamber, where they should be safe from any untoward suasion of gossip or commentary. More than one cast a look of indignation at Lord Harold before quitting the room.

“Jane,” my brother whispered anxiously, “I do not like the complexion of this affair. Lord Harold could well hang!”

“We must speak to him, Frank.”

I forced my way against the current of Southampton folk intent upon procuring a tankard of ale from the publican before the proceedings should recommence — and saw that a wide berth had been left about the position of Lord Harold and his man. The former rose, and bowed to me courteously.

“Have you gone mad?” I demanded. “Are you determined to place your neck in a noose? Sophia Challoner is not worth such circumspection!”

“No, my dear,” he said with acid precision, “but she has managed my fate with admirable skill. Whoever killed that girl — and I cannot doubt it was one of the Netley party — the outcome must be the same. The duel is prevented, Mr. Ord is safe — and Sophia’s chief enemy, Harold Trowbridge, is consigned to oblivion!”

“And so her despatching of French agents may proceed unimpeded,” I said thoughtfully. “It is a masterful stroke, to be sure. But, my lord—”

“Orlando — pray go in search of refreshment, there’s a good fellow. I am perishing of thirst.”

The valet turned without a word and thrust his small frame into the surging knot of humanity.

“My lord—”

“While I cool my heels in the Southampton gaol,”

he continued in a goaded tone, “yet another port town shall be set alight. The thought is such as to inspire rage — and yet, my friends, what else may I do, but heel to the present course? I cannot escape the charge of murder, by claiming an attempted duel: the latter merely establishes my credentials as a bloodthirsty rogue. You see how they have routed me, with this business of the girl’s visits to the Dolphin—”

“You must not allow it, my lord,” Frank said hotly.

“Your notions of honour — of shielding the innocent — do you the greatest credit, to be sure; but the impulse towards discretion is ill-placed in the present circumstance.”

“My lord, ” I said urgently. “Did you never speak to Flora Bastable when she sought you at the inn?”

“I had no notion that she did so. I must consider the housekeeper’s testimony a complete hum.”

“But I certainly saw her there — on two occasions at least, and once with Orlando. That was the very day before the duel.”

His eyes, which had been roving fitfully about the room as though in search of some means of escape, came to rest suddenly upon my own.

My brother snorted. “What does that signify, Jane? The valet did his duty, and sent the girl about her business! Lord Harold had better have the fellow sworn, and admit his evidence to the coroner — and then we might tell all the world how little his lordship knew of the maid!”

“What of the letter her sister claims that Flora received of you?” I persisted. “The missive summoning her to Butlock Common?”

“I sent no such letter. What are you suggesting, Jane?”

“That the note was a ruse! Flora told me herself: she never learned her letters. She could neither write nor read.”

“And so she must exhibit the paper to one who could tell her what it said — and thus the summons to Butlock, and the name of the man who signed it, must be recalled with clarity later.” Lord Harold’s voice was grim.

“—Once the girl was dead. Such coldness and calculation! It is beyond my ability to credit! But which of the Netley party penned that note?”

Lord Harold, however, was gazing beyond me now, at the doorway of the inquest chamber. The sound of commotion behind suggested that the panel was on the point of reconvening — but it was not this that had drawn his attention. I turned, and glimpsed a blond head above a black cloak. A countenance serene as a god’s. And a look of resolution about the set mouth.

Mr. Ord, it seemed, had determined to speak his part.