Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

Chapter 16 Conflicting Testimony

WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY 1813

BRIGHTON, CONT.

MY PERIOD OF REFLECTION WAS BROKEN BY A KNOCK AT the bedchamber door. A footman stood in the passage, with the intelligence that my brother awaited me downstairs—with a party of friends.

“Has the inquest adjourned?”

“Not a quarter-hour ago, ma’am.”

I hastened below, and discovered Henry established in a little side-parlour with the Earl and Countess of Swithin; all three were taking glasses of something fortifying—brandy, in the case of the gentlemen, and ratafia, in the person of Desdemona.

“What is the coroner’s verdict?” I enquired, as I accepted a glass of wine.

“Oh, murder, of course,” Swithin said grimly; “but to everyone’s surprize, it was brought back against a person or persons unknown. There is much talk as to the motives in such a judgement; it was said at first that the Regent must have intervened, to preserve the freedom of a celebrated poet and nobleman; but those acquainted with the two gentlemen are well aware that no love is lost between them, the Regent detesting the very sight of George Gordon. His Royal Highness finds the poet’s club foot distasteful, and cannot forgive him for forming a part of Princess Caroline’s court. So there is astonishment in many quarters. Old Sir Harding Cross cannot be to blame, as he owes his position to the Regent; it was hardly he who taught the jury mercy. Perhaps it was Frogmore, the coroner, who urged caution.”

“For a wonder,” I observed, “a coroner’s panel has drawn a conclusion independent of the magistrate—and declined to hang a man who insists he was elsewhere when murder was done! What is likely to happen now?”

“Byron shall have to go to ground, somehow,” Henry said. “There are any number of folk in Brighton out for his blood, chief among them the poor young lady’s father.”

“General Twining was in attendance, I apprehend?”

“He testified as to the remains being his daughter’s, at which point the panel was required to view the corpse. Several went quite green, I understand. The General said only that he had entrusted his daughter to the chaperonage of Mrs. Silchester, who had failed in her duties; that he had quitted the Assembly Rooms at the decent hour of eleven o’clock; ordered Miss Twining’s maid to wait up for her; and was roused at five o’clock in the morning with the intelligence that his daughter had never returned. He suspected, he claimed, a further abduction on the part of Lord Byron—and informed the Brighton constables of the fact.”

“Abduction? So the tale of Cuckfield came out—and still the jury did not find against his lordship?”

“It was viewed, rather, as a point in Lord Byron’s favour; a man who wished so ardently for a Flight to the Border can hardly be suspected of murdering his lady.”

“General Twining cannot have regarded the matter thus.”

“No, indeed,” Henry agreed. “Having given his evidence—and heard Mrs. Silchester, amidst much tears and lamentation, assure the panel that Lady Caroline Lamb had been most insistent upon carrying Miss Twining away to the Pavilion—the General retired into his handkerchief. His face emerged from it only at the announcement of the panel’s verdict—at which, in a rage, he slapped Lord Byron’s face with said handkerchief, and vowed to see him dead at twenty paces if he were to escape hanging.”

“Lord!” Desdemona breathed. “And Byron?”

“—Merely looked contemptuous; and said he should be only too happy to meet the General, his honour and reputation having suffered injuries enough already at his hands. Scrope Davies—who provided my intelligence—said Byron has long hated the fellow, and might more readily have drowned the father than the daughter.” Henry rubbed his nose in speculation. “I daresay poor Byron’s life is not worth a farthing in Brighton at this present. Your Lady Oxford might take him back to London, Countess—but for the magistrate’s demand that Byron remain in town for the nonce.”

“Are further researches to be undertaken? Does the magistrate mean to learn the truth of Miss Twining’s death?” I enquired.

“Not at all,” Mona scoffed. “It is as I predicted; Sir Harding shall be content to say that persons unknown killed the girl, and have done.”

“I cannot agree, my love,” Swithin objected. “Indeed, I think Old HardCross intends to charge Byron regardless of the inquest’s judgement. It is within his office, you know, provided he can recruit his proofs, and present them along with Byron at the next Assizes.”

“The magistrate is a fool if he believes Byron should be witless enough to leave Miss Twining’s body in his own rooms. Good God,” Desdemona said bitterly, “had he indeed drowned the poor child, as all of Brighton supposes, he had merely to leave her lying on the shingle! For what possible purpose should he have taken a hammock from his own yacht, and sewn her into it like a lost seaman, in order to carry her to his bed?”

“The hammock was indeed Byron’s?” I repeated, startled.

“Yes,” Henry supplied. “The word Giaour, you will recall, was embroidered on the canvas—and as you correctly divined, that is the name of Byron’s boat. It is a Turkish word, apparently, meaning infidel, or heathen … or … some such. Sir Harding would have it the hammock alone indicts his lordship.”

“Nonsense!” Desdemona cried. “Does any murderer leave his calling-card on the body?”

“Sir Harding can think of nobody else to blame, my dear,” her husband soothed. “This adjournment is a lull in the battle merely, with further salvos to come.”

“But what did Lord Byron say, that so persuaded the jury of his innocence?” I demanded.

“It was his valet, rather than Byron himself, who moved them,” Henry supplied. “The man is Brighton born and bred. Byron employs him only when he chances to descend upon the town for a bit of sailing; and with little in the nature of loyalty due to such an indifferent master, the valet—one Chaunce by name—was readily credited by his fellows on the panel. He declared that Byron returned to the Arms at a quarter to one in the morning, well before Miss Twining is known to have quitted the Assembly with Lady Caroline Lamb, which may be put at one o’clock; and that his lordship demanded that his bags be packed. He paid his shot with the innkeeper while Chaunce collected his traps. Chaunce and Byron then quitted the Arms for Mr. Scrope Davies’s house, Davies affirming that he had waited in the publick rooms and escorted Byron and his man to his own lodgings. At no point was Byron out of sight of either of his fellows—he cannot then have effected murder.”

“Did Mr. Davies say when they achieved his lodgings?” I asked swiftly.

“He would put it at perhaps a quarter to two in the morning. He and Byron sat up drinking Port, and talking over the regrettable behaviour of Lady Caroline Lamb. I’m told that Byron declared he fled the King’s Arms in order to avoid Lady Caro—he was certain she would attempt to breach his rooms that night, as she is forever doing. The two gentlemen sought their beds at three o’clock. Byron was up again at eight, mounted and riding north for London. All this he told the coroner, under oath.”

“I suppose he might have killed Miss Twining between three and eight, with no one the wiser,” I said thoughtfully, “but how was the deed effected? Is Mr. Davies to be relied upon?”

“I daresay Davies would sell his own mother to get Byron off,” Swithin confided. “They’ve been friends for ages.”

“Would he, indeed?” Desdemona turned on her husband swiftly. “Even in a matter of murder? This is not a debt of honour Davies stands security for, Charles!—None of your vowels offered over the faro table at White’s! Even so frippery a fellow as Scrope must apprehend the gravity of the case.”

“More reason to stand buff, if his friend is in danger of hanging—”

“I do not understand,” Mona said petulantly, “why Byron should be suspected at all. It is distinctly tiresome! Simply because the corpse lay in a room he once inhabited!”

“The mere fact of Miss Twining having been killed outside that room must materially lessen Byron’s security,” I said. “His lordship’s assertion that he quitted the Arms at such-and-such an hour, and Mr. Davies’s statement that his friend spent the whole of the night in his lodgings, are worth little, given that Miss Twining did not die in Byron’s room at the Arms—she was only found there, much later. It might as well have been Lord Byron, as anybody, who drowned her and left her body in his bed for safekeeping.”

“But it is all absurd, from beginning to end!” Desdemona protested. “Why should Byron kill Catherine Twining? He was passionately attached to her! Moreover, how could he possibly have carried that dripping hammock upstairs, under the eyes of the whole publick house, in the middle of the night? Do you not think it appears as tho’ the murderer—whoever he might be—hated Lord Byron, and meant for suspicion to turn upon him?”

“That is what the jury believed,” Henry said.

“But not the magistrate,” Swithin countered. “Absent Byron, all of Brighton is subject to suspicion—and when presented with such a bewildering array, Old HardCross is sure to take comfort in the obvious. He shall prefer to arrest the one man he may name.”

Being too well acquainted with the limited understanding and general indolence of the magistracy, who are appointed more for their connexions than their zeal, I could not find it in me to argue with the Earl. Moreover, I saw a certain cunning in the very implausibility of Byron’s guilt—a cunning of which I suspected him perfectly capable.

“By ostentatiously paying his shot and quitting the King’s Arms at an unlikely hour,” I mused, “his lordship may have deliberately established his absence in the eyes of all observers, precisely to avail himself of those same rooms only hours later. He may depend upon the world exclaiming: ‘Byron was long gone when the girl was killed! Byron should never place his victim in his own bed!’ He may be clever enough to incriminate himself, if I may so express it, in order to convince us all of his innocence.”

There was a pause as the whole party digested this bit of reasoning. Then Mona said, “What a terrible and penetrating mind you own, my dear Jane. I should not like to live too long with such thoughts as yours; they cannot be comfortable. But you have not heard the most diverting thing of all—I have had it from almost every lip in town, tho’ none were present at the panel—how swiftly a delicious on-dit does fly about, to be sure! You will never guess who forced an entry to the inquest!”

“Lady Oxford?”

“She is not yet arrived, else I am certain she should be impatient to meet with you—I have assured her of your good offices on Byron’s behalf.”

“But, Mona—!” I cried, shocked; never had I said my slightest office was devoted to his lordship.

“You have agreed to discover the truth,” she said, shrugging; “and while we may be aware that the truth could run counter to Byron’s interests—Lady Oxford need not know it. It was Caro Lamb who descended upon Mr. Frogmore and Sir Harding!—Dressed in cloth-of-gold, for all the world like Lady Macbeth, excepting only a bloody blade raised high above her head. I am sure she may have been walking in her sleep, or in the grip of a fit at the very least—by all accounts, her looks bordered on the deranged.”

“I had it from Scrope Davies himself,” Henry said with a grin, “at Raggett’s Club not an hour since, that Byron nearly tore his hair when her ladyship invaded the inquest—thrusting back the door with an audible clang, pacing ceremoniously down the aisle between the chairs, calling out in agitation to Mr. Frogmore that she must be heard, for tho’ he would not stay even to save her from the sea, she would not wish Genius to perish under the heel of the rabble.”

“Good God,” I murmured.

“Byron, I’m told, called her ladyship a carrion bird not content with hounding him to death, but that she must come and feast upon his bones. He was on the point of quitting the inquest entirely, which should have been most improper and prejudicial to the jury’s judgement, had friend Scrope not constrained him.”

“And Lady Caroline?” I asked eagerly. “Did she explain her excessive interest in Catherine Twining?”

Mona’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned towards us all conspiratorially. “Caro would have it she wished to warn the dear child against Lord Byron—that his lordship was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, as she put it. You may imagine the sensation her words produced!”

“I wonder he was not taken in charge immediately!” I observed. “But did Lady Caroline state at what hour Miss Twining arrived at the Pavilion?”

“She could not be certain—never looks at clocks—does not keep a timepiece by her—thought it was close to one o’clock, but should never swear to the hour—and in general, suggested such ennui at the question that one wonders how she kept from falling into a doze—or so my sources assure me. As to the manner of Miss Twining’s departure—I am told that Lady Caroline was shockingly vague. She supposed the girl was shown out by a footman. She supposed a chair was found for her. At that juncture a lackey from the stables stood up to claim that he had seen a young lady, dark-haired and dressed in white muslin, hastening towards the Steyne alone, in the middle of the night. He could not immediately swear to the time, but when urged by the coroner to consider the matter, thought it was perhaps a few minutes after the Regent’s great stable clock chimed the three-quarter-hour.”

“And Byron reached his friend Davies’s house, in the company of two witnesses—the selfsame friend and a valet—at a quarter to two,” I observed. “They must have just missed Catherine Twining on the paving!”

“But you forget, Miss Austen,” the Earl interjected. “Whatever may have been her intention of crossing the Steyne, she did not meet her death there. Something—or someone—persuaded her to turn back towards the shingle, where she was undoubtedly drowned.”

I had a sudden idea of Catherine in the night—weary, bewildered, and quite alone—catching sight of the gentleman she most feared, Lord Byron, striding along the paving opposite the Steyne. And cowering back into the shadows of the Marine Pavilion’s grounds, from a dread of meeting him at such an hour …

“What do you make of Lady Caroline’s behaviour?” Henry asked curiously.

Mona shrugged. “Not even the murder of an acquaintance, it would seem, may penetrate her absorption in herself. She is the most selfish creature ever born, you know; the entire world might suffer violent death, and she should go on existing in one of her fevered dreams.”

“Does she wish Lord Byron to hang?—Her words suggest calumny, at the very least, if not a desire to sway the jury against him,” I said.

“Her object was perjury.” Lord Swithin stretched his long legs before him, one beautifully polished boot crossed over the other. “Having disposed of Miss Twining by the happy expedients of imaginary footmen and chairs, Caro would insist, in an elevated accent, that Lord Byron was in her rooms at the Pavilion for the remainder of the night in question—and that she would die rather than alter a word of her testimony, tho’ the sacrifice to her reputation must be complete.”

I raised my brows. “Then either she or Mr. Davies is lying. Let us hope, for Byron’s sake, that Lady Caroline may not be believed. Did the magistrate credit the idea of his lordship passing Miss Twining on her way out the Pavilion door, he might certainly find an opportunity to prove Byron drowned the child, as a sort of Attic sacrifice to Lady Caro!”

“I do not think Sir Harding Cross credited her ladyship’s assertions. He thanked her for her testimony, then quietly ordered her withdrawn from the room. She went, I am told, rather as Anne Boleyn went to the axe, with her head high and her arms grasped by two bashful constables.”

“It is all a sort of play to Caro,” Desdemona said; “it comes from growing up among the Devonshire House Set; they could none of them be serious. But tell me, Jane: What do you propose to do in this matter? How shall you set about your researches? How may Swithin and I be of service?”

“Lady Oxford is even now on her road to Brighton?” I asked.

“We expect her by four o’clock. Should you like to dine with us?”

“Far better, before she is arrived in Brighton, to speak to Byron himself.” I glanced at the Earl of Swithin. “Can it be managed, sir, do you think?”

He threw me an engaging smile. “Nothing could be easier, my dear Miss Austen. If I know Byron, he went directly from the inquest to Scrope Davies’s rooms, to drown his sorrows in brandy! Davies has long been an acquaintance of mine—we may certainly pay him a call!”