Jane and the Stillroom Maid

Chapter 21 A Macabre Masquerade

30 August 1806, cont.

“MISS AUSTEN! I AM TOLD THAT YOU HAVE MET WITH the most abominable behaviour in the world this morning! Are you entirely well?”

Sir James Villiers, his countenance animated by the liveliest anxiety for my welfare, hailed me thus from the swinging door that separated the public rooms of the inn from Mr. Davies’s quarters. I assured the Justice that I was in perfect health and spirits, though justifiably apprehensive. I should prefer the experience of highwaymen and robbers to remain marked by its singularity.

“Naturally!” he cried. “And for that very reason I have instructed my men to throw Michael Tivey into the watchhouse, alongside his confederate Will Pickle. Tivey has been responsible for too many disturbances of late, and should benefit from a period of sober reflection.”

“Will Pickle, I presume, acted today as highwayman?”

“He did, and confessed the whole at my interrogation. He is a cousin of Tivey’s from over the Buxton way, and so was not likely to be recognised in this part of the world. I am assured he meant you no harm; but, however, he appeared on the road and brandished a firearm, and thus must be tried as a desperate and violent man. He shall be fortunate to escape hanging.”

“For that, I should have to lay charges against him, I suppose.”

Sir James appeared surprised. “I had not thought that was open to question. You will surely wish to do so.”

“I should rather show clemency, and perhaps obtain valuable information in exchange. Michael Tivey, too, I presume, is open to the laying of a charge? For there were several witnesses as to his thieving entry into our chambers.”

“Certainly.” Sir James’s eyes narrowed. “What is it you would propose, Miss Austen?”

“Mr. Tivey sought to obtain the stillroom book compiled by the murdered maid, Tess Arnold. There can be only one purpose in his elaborate subterfuge: he regards the book as a threat to his own security. I have already perused nearly half of the maid’s entries, and may attest that there was considerable collusion between herself and the surgeon; she often obtained medicines from Mr. Tivey that should belong more properly in an apothecary’s establishment. But I can find no evidence of any real wrongdoing on the surgeon’s part. I must suppose, therefore, that Tivey has no idea what Tess might have written in the book — and that it is his own guilty knowledge which drives him to secure and destroy it.”

“What would you have me do with the fellow?”

“Is he still detained there, in Mr. Davies’s kitchen?”

“He is.”

“Then I should very much like to speak to him, Sir James — if you would be so good as to bear me company.”

The Justice smiled, and held wide the kitchen door. “With the very greatest pleasure, Miss Austen — provided you will undertake to leave in peace, any crockery you are tempted to fling at Mr. Tivey’s head.”

“If it must be so, it must.” I sighed, and preceded him through the door.

The inn’s kitchen and adjoining scullery were of a size commensurate with the needs of a coaching establishment. A cook and two scullery-maids, sweat glistening at their temples, were huddled between the hearth and a double stove set into the wall at its side; Sally our parlour-maid sat darning a sock by the open back door. Michael Tivey, his powerful arms bound tightly to his sides with a length of twine, was perched on a stool; Nate stared balefully at him, blunderbuss levelled, from a distance of perhaps five feet. Mr. Davies appeared too harassed by his several duties, and the signal honour of a Justice in the kitchen, to spare Michael Tivey a thought.

“Here we are,” I declared, “and none the worse for a trifling fall from a pony trap, on my side, nor a blow to the head on yours, Mr. Tivey. I did not think that I should meet the respected Coroner of Bakewell again in such circumstances — but life is replete with irony, is it not?”

“Get the woman out of ’ere, Joostice,” Tivey muttered at Sir James. “Ah’ve no time fer a deal o’ palaver.”

“I should lend Miss Austen your ear, Tivey,” Sir James replied in a severe tone; “she has your interest — and liberty — at heart.”

The surgeon’s head came up, his countenance a sketch in canny hostility. “Wha’ joo want wit’ me, then?” He made no effort to speak, I noticed, with the deliberate care of the Inquest’s proceedings. Discovery and disgrace had returned him to a baser realm.

“Mr. Davies,” I suggested, “would you be so good as to afford us the liberty of the kitchen for a period? Mr. Tivey might prefer to speak for the Justice’s ears alone.”

Davies sought Sir James’s face, then cleared his throat noisily. “Now then, girls,” he ordered. “Into the yard wit’ thee. You, too, Nate. Happen we might fetch that load o’ flour Miller ‘as waitin’.”

The serving members of The Rutland Arms filed dutifully — and not at all unwillingly — through the back kitchen door, and Sir James saw it fastened securely with the bolt. The warmth of the kitchen was swiftly stifling; but my own discomfort could not be allowed to matter. I folded my hands and looked at Michael Tivey.

“You sought this morning, by various stratagems, to obtain the stillroom book compiled by the dead maid, Tess Arnold. You did so because you fear what the woman wrote concerning yourself. Your activity came too late, however, and fell far short of your objective; I had already perused the book’s pages, and what Tess knew of your nefarious habits, Michael Tivey, you may be assured that I now comprehend as well.”

For an instant, the most naked fear could be glimpsed in the surgeon’s small, dark eyes; I felt a surge of satisfaction within. A man afraid for his life is a man who may be bent to purpose.

“Ah’ve told Sir James what ah know.”

“Of Tess Arnold’s death, perhaps — but it is her life that concerns us now. I shall not scruple to say that circumstances have informed against you. Your case looks black, indeed. The Justice has agreed to offer you a chance at winning some leniency from the Law. But you must be frank and open, Mr. Tivey — you must speak without reserve or hesitation. Nothing else is likely to save you.”

“Ah’ll speak,” he cried out, before I had barely concluded my sentence. “Ah’ll tell Tha’ what ah can.”

I glanced at Sir James. His expression was wooden; but from a flicker of his eyelids I judged I should be allowed to proceed. I drew forth a vacant stool and settled myself upon it.

“Very well. You procured for the maid a quantity of medicines, such as should properly be in the keeping of a professional surgeon or physician. That much is clear. But you gave her other things as well, did you not? You instructed her in methods of healing that were far beyond her station.”

“Tess’d learnt ’er letters,” he explained.

“She borrowed books from you,” I declared, with greater certainty than I possessed; I must tread carefully now, and never disclose to Tivey how little I actually knew.

“Yes!” he cried. “I lent her my books. There was noo ’arm in it. She was hungry fer learning, and books is scarce to coom by. She’d askt the Master up t’a Hall, and Mr. Andrew. They’d gone through libree for ’er. But they’m old books, in Latin; and neither Tess nor I were properly learnt in they dead tongues.”

“Naturally.” I kept my eyes trained upon the surgeon’s head. His own gaze was steadfastly bent upon his knees; the bluster of former days was gone. I saw again in memory the strong forearms and the heat of the blacksmith’s bellows, Tivey amidst a crowd in Water Street, careless about his effect. If no one claims ’im, ah’ll be wanting the body for study. … A good corpse was hard to come by. The students of London physicians must pay a pretty penny for the remains of beggars; and even then the hue and cry of the pauper’s family could be fearsome to behold. There had been riots in the streets of Town on the strength of a common criminal’s being turned over to the College of Physicians; it was hardly unusual for God-fearing folk to regard the dismemberment of a corpse with superstitious terror.

“You lent Tess Arnold books about herbs and simples; and about the workings of various medicines,” I suggested, my eyes on his face. “But I have an idea, Mr. Tivey, that you must also have spoken to her regarding the subject of… anatomisation?”

He drew a shuddering breath, and thrust his face in his hands. “Oh, God! And I told her to breathe not a word! The stupid bitch … the stupid cowl She went an’ wrote of it in her book!”

I looked to Sir James. He raised an eyebrow in confused enquiry.

“Did you manage to study corpses together, Mr. Tivey?”

No answer but a sob from behind the splayed fingers.

Sir James’s voice was like a lash. “Speak, man, lest you hang for offences that dare not be uttered! Speak honestly of what you know!”

“We only went but twice,” Tivey muttered. “Twice, when Tess were able to steal out of the Hall. It had to be when a grave was freshly dug, and on a night of no moon. She wore a man’s clothes — dark, so’s to move quickly, and not be seen. We’d dig oop the coffin and carry the body to a field in a carter’s dray. Nobody were the wiser.”

He swallowed hard, and raised beseeching eyes to Sir James’s face. “We always poot the corpse back in’t grave. We meant no ‘arm by it. How else is a man to know the way o’ the body?”

“You did this twice,” the Justice said between his teeth. “Twice you violated a hallowed grave in consecrated ground. Did you intend to effect a similar abomination on the night of the maid’s death?”

The surgeon nodded once in despair. “There was a suicide,” he told us, “along oot Taddington way. A young fool lost a deal o’ brass at cards and blew ‘is brains oot in ‘is father’s barn. Parson meant to bury’m at the crossroads near Taddington, just where the road meets the fork down fra’ Miller’s Dale. Tess could walk over right easy fra’ the Hall.”

“And so you required her to come.”

“I sent bit o’ note in some morphia she’d ordered.”

And Tess had walked out through the hills from Tideswell, wearing her borrowed suit of black clothes, a spectral figure under a fitful moon. Only she had never arrived for her dreadful assignation.

“I found the grave right enough,” Tivey went on. “And who’s to care, what befalls the corpse of a sinner? ’E weren’t in churchyard, any road. I waited more’n two hour fer Tess. She nivver coom, she nivver sent no word.”

“And then?”

Tivey hesitated, and dropped his eyes from Sir James’s face. “I weren’t aboot to let a good corpse go to waste. I opened the grave and took’m out.”

“May God have mercy on your soul, Michael Tivey,” the Justice muttered; and turned away in revulsion.

WE LEARNED LITTLE MORE FROM THE SURGEON AFTER that, though we pressed him closely for particulars of all he had taught Tess Arnold. A formidable character emerged from Michael Tivey’s words: intent upon her skill, with the toughness of a man twice her years; ruthless in pursuit of knowledge, and possessed of a heart of stone. Tess Arnold, I judged, should use any tool that fortune placed within her power, whether the tool possessed a soul or no; but perhaps it was her unswerving passion that had proved her downfall.

“We must have, at least, the names of those they anatomised,” Sir James said in a voice full low. “Did their families learn of the violation in the churchyard, any form of violence might well result. The most respectable of folk might well find it in their hearts to murder with such a cause — and to visit upon the maid’s corpse, the very savagery that their own Deceased had suffered at her hands.”

I nodded, and studied Michael Tivey’s crestfallen countenance. Sir James should be left to secure this final intelligence; it was he who must pursue the bereaved families, and visit further anguish upon those already torn with loss. Tivey looked, to me, to have divulged the worst part of his guilty knowledge; he huddled now, drained of all emotion, on his hard wooden stool.

The great bell of All Saints tolled the hour of five o’clock. The kitchen maids were hovering beyond the door; the innkeeper’s dinner should be decidedly behind-hand. I informed Sir James of my engagement for the evening, received his ardent thanks on the room’s threshold, and fled without a backwards glance.

Though murder will out, and the guilty must pay, I sometimes fear the turn of my own understanding. I had possessed not an idea of Tivey’s secret when first I undertook to persuade; but the apprehension of all that he had done arose in my mind as swift and sure as a passage of vows between two lovers, such as I might pen on paper with my own hand. It was extraordinary — by any construction, extraordinary; and I knew, as I sped towards my bedchamber and Cassandra’s grey silk, that I should not rid myself of the horror of Tivey’s confession for many nights to come.

AT SIX O’CLOCK I ONCE MORE DESCENDED THE FRONT stairs, a woman transformed in her outer garb, however shaken she remained within. I found myself already expected — Dawson the coachman stood correct by the door of an elegant crane-necked coach. And so, in borrowed combs and a gown rather breathless through the bodice, I set off for Chatsworth House. Being absolved of the burden of conversation on this second journey along the Baslow road, I had leisure to think; but such thoughts as must come ensured a violent headache. Better to banish reason, and peer instead through the closed carriage’s octagonal side-lights — to admire the verdant folds of Manners Wood, the stone enclosures of the fields, the long rays of sun gilding the saddles of the hills. I found that I should be sad to leave Derbyshire on the Monday. It was a landscape that beguiled without intending — a harsh and lovely fall of ground that inspired passion, but cared nothing for those who would claim it. One might be suffered to pass unscathed through the Peaks, but one could never claim to own them, whatever the Devonshires might say.

The country was not unlike the character of those it bred. I considered Tess Arnold — a girl grown more inscrutable, the more I learned of her. We knew, now, why she had worn a man’s clothes on the night of her murder, but not why she had been killed. Had some grieving person, entirely unknown to us — whose late wife, or dead child, or long-suffering parent she had torn from an open grave — taken up his gun, and despatched her as brutally as she had served his kin? Then why leave Michael Tivey at liberty, to plunder graves anew?

And what, exactly, had been the maid’s relations with Andrew Danforth? Had she loved him — or merely used him to obtain her borrowed feathers? The state of undress Mrs. Haskell had observed in the privacy of the ice-house, might have been nothing more than an opportunity seized for the exchange of a maid’s habit for that of a gentleman; seduction might have been the farthest thing from Tess Arnold’s mind.

The carriage jolted over a dry rut in the road, and I clutched at the edge of my seat. Reveries about unknown persons, and their possible grievances, were all very well in their way; they might serve quite admirably to divert Sir James Villiers’s attention from the man who now sat in the Bakewell gaol. But the story, to my way of thinking, would not do. Had Tess been despatched by an outraged mourner, in revenge for crimes of anatomisation, why then should George Hemming confess to murder? All Michael Tivey’s talk of churchyards and suicide threw not the slightest light on Hemming’s anguish. I shook my head. Whatever Tess Arnold had intended in her gentleman’s clothes on Monday night, it had played no part in her death.

IT WAS AS WE APPROACHED PILSLEY, AND THE TURNING in our road for Chatsworth, that I espied the lone horseman. He had pulled up his mount on a little rise above, and was staring keenly down at my equipage as it approached the western gates of the park. Both horse and rider were utterly still, their figures suggesting the statue rather than life; and something chilling there was in so undisguised, and so acute, a scrutiny. Indiscernible myself behind the shutters of my coach, I stared implacably back. Only one person in Derbyshire was plunged in so profound a mourning; and only one bore that air of grief, even in stillness. The Marquess of Hartington, Devonshire’s heir.

But why was he not already at home, and dressing for his sister’s dinner?

He wheeled the horse’s head — raised one arm — a whip flashed out, and as swift as a bird in flight, the boy and his mount had put Chatsworth to their backs. I watched, until a turning in the road swept them both from my sight; and knew that it was the last glimpse of the Marquess I should have, that evening.