Jane and The Wandering Eye

Chapter 13 A Confidential Nuncheon

Sunday,

16 December 1804

A QUIET SUNDAY SERVICE AT THE QUEEN’S CHAPEL, FOLLOWED by a short turn in the muddy Crescent — and so the morning of my twenty-ninth birthday passed as many a Sabbath, while resident in Bath.[63] Though quite out of charity with all my beloved family, I was nonetheless treated to some small remembrances of the day — an embroidered needle-case from dear Cassandra, offered with an anxious look; from my father, a handsome set of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, bound in vellum and tooled in gold; and from my mother, who learned somehow of the slyness of the Bath Chronicle, a lecture on the foolishness of impropriety in one so nearly beyond the marriageable age. Did I suffer my reputation to sink, no respectable gentleman would ever solicit my hand, and how my dear mother was expected to keep me once Reverend Austen was cold in his grave, she could not begin to think. She then exclaimed at length upon the subject of Lord Harold, and went so far as to solicit my father’s authority, and beg that he should abhor the acquaintance — but the Reverend George, however uneasy in his own mind, refused to censure my activity so much. I was, he declared, a woman of some maturity, and must exert my own judgement in these and all matters; I should not have my father to look to, in a very few years more; and if the principles with which I had been raised, did not serve as friends in the present case, he could do nothing further with me.

I reminded my mother that our beloved Madam Lefroy had declined the wedded state until her twenty-ninth year, and had yet attained a highly respectable, if modest, condition, in the acceptance of her clergyman — but it would not do.

“For,” the good lady darkly pronounced, “Madam Lefroy’s excellent fortune is of no account, for there were many more eligible young men a quarter-century ago, before Buonaparte forced the country into regimentals. Cassandra I cannot reproach for tarrying in the single state, though she is several years your senior, for she would have got poor Tom Fowle if she could. But there — it was not to be. Let her misfortune be a lesson, my dear, and do not place your affections among such men as are likely to die of little trifling fevers.”[64]

We were joined at breakfast by Henry and Eliza, who took notice of the day by pressing upon me a ravishing headdress of apricot silk and feathers, purchased no doubt in Edgars Buildings, and quite admirably suited to my fashionable new gown.

Promptly at eleven the housemaid announced Lord Harold; he bid good morning to all the world, won an interesting sparkle from Eliza’s fine eyes, presented me with a posy, and voiced the hope that I might be granted many happy returns of the day. This little ceremony of deception being well-received, and the weather continuing to hold fine, his lordship did not scruple to suggest a country drive; and to the astonishment and dismay of all my family, I readily acceded to the whole, and hurried into my warmest pelisse. The Gentleman Rogue assured my father I should be much improved from the healthfulness of the airing, and that I should be returned unharmed before nightfall; and so we drove off, with an agreeable sensation of liberty on my part, and a distinct uneasiness behind.

“I expect to be arrived in Bristol by one o’clock at the latest, barring a mishap to the wheels,” Lord Harold observed as we trotted up Charles Street towards Monmouth, and the turning for the Bristol Road. “I shall regale you in the interval with an account of last evening’s adventures at the Theatre Royal.”

“Miss Conyngham was in evidence?”

“She was, though her brother Hugh was not. Indisposed, according to the program notes — perhaps the result of your too-lively dancing, Jane.”

“You do not think, that having failed in his efforts to silence me, he has summarily fled the city?”

“His sister assures me that he has not — but in her word I place the barest confidence. Upon quitting the Theatre Royal, however, I undertook to seek his lodgings — and was told that the gentleman was within, but was to see no one, under the strictest injunctions from his doctor. And so I had not the least glimpse of the fellow, and cannot say whether he was there or no.”

“That is very bad.”

“Less bad, perhaps, than it at first appears. Mr. Conyngham is unlikely to desert his sister. Of Mr. Smythe, however, I cannot say so much.”

I drew the collar of my pelisse close about my throat, at the sensation of a sudden chill. “But you have some intelligence of Smythe?”

Lord Harold nodded. “I happened to enquire of an errand-boy in the wings, and for the price of a few pence was told that the constables had rousted the villain from bed in the small hours of yesterday morning. Being warned by his landlady, however, Smythe jumped from a back window, and made off through the alleyways unpursued.”

“He jumped from a window, you say? And was it a first-floor window?”

“You think of Her Grace’s anteroom! The same suspicion has animated us both. I eagerly enquired of the boy, and was told with the greatest pride and satisfaction that his hero Smythe disdained any distance under twenty feet. He is a tumbler by rearing, and was wont as a child to roam about the countryside with a band of performers known for their physical feats.”

“But this is excellent news!” I cried. “Did we find the guise of Pierrot discarded in his lodgings, we might free Lord Kinsfell today!”

“I had expected you to feel some trepidation in the knowledge that the man was at liberty. Are you so careless of security, Jane?”

I lifted a gloved hand to shade my eyes from the brilliance of the morning sun. The countryside beyond the city’s environs was blighted by the advance of winter — a brownish heap of rolling Somerset hills, dotted at random with the occasional beast; but my spirits would not be oppressed even by fallow fields. “I cannot rejoice in his escape,” I admitted, “but must trust to Providence. Mr. Smythe is unlikely to adventure so perilous a town as Bath for some time to come. I will not indulge in excessive anxiety.”

“All the same—” Lord Harold began.

“I shall promise you never to venture out-of-doors without the company of another,” I said. “Now tell me of Miss Conyngham.”

“She refused to see me, of course, and so I was reduced to storming her dressing-room. I thought it wise to inform her that Mr. Elliot was hardly as satisfied with the case against my nephew as had once been believed, and that the magistrate was even now embarked upon the errand of tracing a curious bauble discarded in the cunning passage, that might well prove to be the property of the murderer. I was deliberately vague; but Miss Conyngham was observed to pale, and stagger a little for support — and she agreed at last to the space of a conversation.”

“And? Did she confess the whole?”

“Jane, Jane — would you have a woman go blindly to the scaffold? Naturally she did not. She intends to divine first how much I know. That I suspect a good deal — that I have perhaps learnt something to her detriment, from my researches or my nephew or both — she is completely aware. But she is confident I have not the conclusive proof; and so she intends to fence with me for as long as she is able.

“We sat down; and I found occasion to comment upon the Earl of Swithin’s interesting attentions to my niece — our belief that he intended to renew his offer for Mona’s hand — a few reflections on the disappointment of Mr. Portal’s death in that quarter — Mona ready to be consoled by the attentions of another — even Colonel Easton much in attendance — and Miss Conyngham’s visage was observed to darken. I then made my adieux, and left her to consider the intelligence conveyed; and I hope very soon to see my stratagems bear fruit.”

“You are an incorrigible beast,” I calmly replied, “but as the lady seems deserving of no very great solicitude, I cannot abuse you as thoroughly as I might. Did she betray anxiety? Guilt? The desperation of an abandoned character?”

“None whatsoever. A suggestion of grief, at Portal’s passing — but we must believe that to be the grossest falsehood. It is a pity,” Lord Harold reflected, “that such a degree of dramatic talent should be employed in so unfortunate a manner.”

“You regard her as beyond salvation, then? As being devoid of every proper feeling?”

“I cannot reconcile her conduct in any other way,” he replied, with an edge of harshness to his usual tone. “And I confess that it troubles me exceedingly. Real evil is rare enough in this world, my dear Jane — but when found in the form of a beautiful young woman, sobering in the extreme.”

WE ACHIEVED BRISTOL IN LESS THAN TWO HOURS OF EASY travel, and immediately sought one of the city’s principal inns — the ancient, half-timbered Llandoger Trow, which sits not far from Bristol’s Theatre Royal. Lord Harold reasoned that if the Earl of Swithin had been present in Bristol so early as Monday evening — and moving in concert with Maria Conyngham — then he should have been likely to seek a lodging not far from where the actress played. Before we embarked upon our interrogation of the publican, however, Lord Harold was intent upon bread and cheese, in the quiet of a little parlour, while I should not say nay to a respectable pot of tea.

We pulled up on cobbled King Street and turned into the Llandoger Trow’s yard. A stable-boy ran out to seize the horses’ heads.

“Morning, guv’nor,” the youth affably cried. “Will you be changing horses, or staying the night?”

“Neither,” Lord Harold replied. “A bucket of oats, pray, and some water for the team.”

“Quick as winking, guv. You just ask for Bob when you’re wishful of having them sent round.”

“Very good. Tell me, Bob, are there any travellers in the habit of hiring equipages of the publican?”

“Post horses, you mean?”

“I do not. I am wondering whether your master—”

“Mr. Twinkling,” Bob quickly supplied.

“—Mr. Twinkling — keeps a carriage or two that he occasionally lets out for the use of travellers. Lodgers at the inn, for example, who might wish a morning’s drive; or those whose equipages may have fallen into disrepair.”

The boy’s face cleared. “There’s his old chariot, and the missus’s tilbury, what he lets out with Nelly betimes.”

“Very good, my lad,” Lord Harold said, and tossed him tuppence.

The Llandoger Trow was a noble old pile, its casement windows secured against the draughts and a roaring fire in the massive hearth. I welcomed the tide of warmth, and its concomitant odours of roasting fowl and bubbling stew, and followed a woman I assumed to be Mrs. Twinkling into a private parlour at the broad building’s front. A scattering of local townsfolk held place in the public room, their tankards clattering noisily on oaken tables; but here, all was quiet and removed, with a faint scent of beeswax that was not unpleasing.

“You’ll be wanting a nuncheon, I expect,” the woman said kindly. “Half frozen you must be, miss, coming all that way and the sun not half so warm as it should be. A toddy, perhaps, or some wine punch?”

“Tea would suit me exceedingly,” I replied gratefully. “Are you Mrs. Twinkling?”

“These thirty year or more, miss. You’re a stranger to Bristol?”

“Yes.” I drew off my bonnet and gloves and set them on a chair. “Though our acquaintance have often praised the city — and the Llandoger Trow in particular — most handsomely. The Earl of Swithin was recently your lodger, I believe?”

“And has been, off and on, a year and more. He’s a great one for the theatre, is the Earl.”

“Indeed! We are speaking of the same Lord Swithin, I collect — a well-made, fair-haired gentleman with a commanding aspect, and a very fine coach-and-four, with the device of a tiger on its door?”

“Aye, and he weren’t half put out when his axle broke and old Twinkling couldn’t set it to rights on Monday,” she replied with energy. “Fair shouted the eaves of the house down around us, he did, with all his oaths about needing to be on the road as soon as may be.”

“Mrs. Twinkling,” Lord Harold said with a nod from the doorway. “Your excellent husband thought I should find you here. We should be greatly obliged if you could manage some victuals.”

“I’ve bread and cheese and half a cold ham just waiting in the larder,” she said, beaming, and left us with a curtsey.

“That was most unfortunate,” I told Lord Harold crossly, “for she was on the point of revealing our Swithin’s history. She remembered him in an instant, and said he was most put out by an injury to his equipage.”

“Do not trouble yourself, madam.” Lord Harold drew a chair to the fire and warmed his hands. “I have had the whole from our host Twinkling himself. It would not do to have us both appear interested to a fault. Lord Swithin was present, from late Sunday until early Wednesday morning, when he sped like hell-fire — excuse me, my dear, a thousand pardons for the liberty — to Bath itself.”

“And the carriage?”

“A curious mishap, indeed; for the axle was unbroken upon his arrival, and appears to have acquired its injury while lodged in the carriage house itself. Mr. Twinkling suspects a band of local boys, who delight in the destruction of transient property. Though we might conjecture a more deliberate cause. The Earl should not have wished to drive his own equipage under Her Grace’s window for the purpose of receiving a murderer.”

“This is most illuminating.”

“The necessity of repairs required our Lord Swithin to hire the missus’s tilbury, about the conduct of some business on Tuesday.”

“—When no doubt he sped like hell-fire to Bath,” I finished absently, “about the stabbing of poor Mr. Portal.”

“Perhaps. Although Mr. Twinkling believed his direction then to have been Portsmouth.”

“Portsmouth! But what could possibly have occasioned so sudden a journey?”

“The Earl received news of a ship Monday — a homebound Indiaman, expected in Portsmouth the following day.”[65]

“Good heavens!”

“Whether it was one of Swithin’s vessels, miraculously returned, or merely another that brought news of his ships’ fate, Twinkling could not tell me. Perhaps he lacked the particulars.”

“Or perhaps Swithin never went to Portsmouth at all.”

“In any case, the Earl returned to the Llandoger Trow in the wee hours of Wednesday, and departed for Bath later that morning in his repaired equipage.”

“If so much is true, it is unlikely that his lordship broke his pressing return from Portsmouth to parade in Laura Place bearded and disguised as Pierrot,” I mused.

“Unlikely — but not impossible. As you say, we cannot know whether he travelled to Portsmouth at all.”

I sighed with vexation. “I must observe, my lord, that we possess an abundance of miscreants, all clamouring for attention, in this sorry business! There is Miss Conyngham, who probably discarded the tiger in the passage; Mr. Smythe, who is a proficient in tumbling, and might have jumped from the open window; and Lord Swithin, who hired a carriage — possibly intended for Portsmouth, or possibly so that he might halt it in argument beneath the Dowager Duchess’s window in Bath.”

“But unfortunately we have no proof of the latter,” Lord Harold retorted, “and that is the one thing Mr. Wilberforce Elliot will undoubtedly require.”

On the heels of this dampening remark, the parlour door swung open, and Mrs. Twinkling appeared with flushed cheeks and a tray of victuals held high. Behind her, to our extreme surprise and no little delight, stood Mr. Elliot himself.

“Lord Harold,” he said, with a bow and a creaking of his considerable weight, “and the little Shepherdess.”

“Miss Austen,” I supplied.

“Imagine my surprise at finding you come to Bristol to greet me! I should not have looked for such a courtesy for all the world. How d’ye do? How d’ye do? And a fine, bright day for a pleasure drive it is!”

“Indeed,” his lordship replied, with a speaking look in Mrs. Twinkling’s direction. The magistrate winked, stood aside to allow her passage, and then eased himself into the little parlour.

“Would you require some fortification against the hard miles remaining to Bath?” Lord Harold enquired, with ironic solicitude, “or perhaps a seat in my carriage?”

“Thanking you kindly, my lord, but I’ve fortified myself already, and your lordship’s funds have been so good as to supply a suitable conveyance.”

“That is very well — for had you accepted, either Miss Austen or myself should have been obliged to remain behind.”

Mr. Elliot laughed. “And isn’t that just like a lord! No politeness is too great, even if it comes at a loss. I’m infinitely obliged, my lord — but just you tuck into the victuals while I bend your ear, as the saying goes, and we’ll suit each other famously. I find you on the trail of a certain Earl, I expect?”

“As no doubt you are yourself.”

Mr. Elliot settled himself on a stout wooden chair, thrust his toes towards the fire, and nodded at me affably. “The cold has brought roses to your cheeks, ma’am, and a picture you do look. I must suppose you are in his lordship’s confidence?”

“You must,” Lord Harold replied. “There is no one whose penetration I value more than Miss Austen’s.”

“And when am I to wish you joy, my lord?” Mr. Elliot enquired with an innocent air.

I coloured despite myself.

“When you have freed my nephew from his unfortunate predicament,” Lord Harold concluded smoothly. He took up a spoon and attacked an admirable Stilton. “Tell us how you fared in London, Elliot. We are all agog for the news.”

“I began my enquiries in Laura Place, as you were so good to suggest. When presented with the interesting tiger pin, the Earl of Swithin frowned — looked amazed— and unfortunately recovered his composure. He assured me he had never seen the thing before, and could only imagine that some sprig of fashion had adopted his device, from a misplaced desire to ape his lordship’s style.”

“—Maria Conyngham, I suspect,” Lord Harold offered complacently.

“Indeed?” Mr. Elliot’s black eyes widened. “I perceive you are before me in this, my lord, as in so many things. But to proceed — I next travelled into London and adventured St. James. The cunning insertion into Fortescue House, of a designing male — in short, a constable by the name of Warren I carried in my train — through excessive flattery of the under-housemaid, elicited the information that his lordship has been absent from London some weeks. Since Saturday a fortnight since, to be exact. Early Wednesday last the Earl sent for the Lady Fortescues from Bristol, without so much as a by-your-leave, and bid them all to travel down to Bath without delay; and quite indignant the under-housemaid was, too, at the disarray this occasioned in the household. All on account of the master’s ill-consideration, and his sisters in quite a taking. And so, perceiving as how I should never find my murderer in Town, I left Warren in possession of the cunning pin, and charged him with enquiring as to its origins among the principal London jewellers; and myself ambled along to Bristol. I have been enquiring of the inns these two hours at least.”

“Then you know, I assume, what we have recently learned.”

“That the Earl had occasion to hire an open carriage? Aye — though it took me a deal of trouble to get it out of old Twinkling,” Mr. Elliot complained. “Not to mention the publicans of the Hart and Dove, the Merry Milkmaid, and the Rose and Crown. There’s a deal of inns in Bristol, my lord, and only one of them had the lodging of the Earl. I’ll warrant any publican worth his ale can spy the Law from a mile off, and turn mute and deaf in an instant, though he’d shift to be of service to yourselves.”

“You know, then, that he is supposed to have gone to Portsmouth Tuesday.”

“And that I shall next be coaching that way myself,” Mr. Elliot rejoined with resignation. “It seems the Earl refused a driver, being intent upon handling the ribbons himself. I see how your thoughts are forming in that quarter. You think to find his lordship never went to Portsmouth at all. But tell me, my lord, your reasons for suspecting Miss Conyngham.”

Lord Harold was engrossed in consuming a very fine portion of ham, and seemed entirely given over to enjoyment; but after an instant, he reached into his coat and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I believe you will find a few of your answers here, Mr. Elliot.”

The magistrate seized them immediately. “Letters, my lord?”

“Taken inadvertently from Mr. Portal’s theatre office. I might suggest, in future, that you search a fellow’s place of business as well as his lodgings, my good sir.”

Elliot perused the papers swiftly, his brow furrowed in an effort to make out the hand, and then raised his eyes to Lord Harold.

“Well, I’m blessed,” he said succinctly. “The girl and Swithin hand-in-glove. I shall take them up immediately upon returning to Bath.”

“Stay, Mr. Elliot,” Lord Harold enjoined swiftly, and to me, “Pray pour out the tea, Miss Austen, and I should be very much obliged.”

I did so, and offered a cup to the magistrate; but he declined it with an air of impatience. “And why should I leave these malefactors at liberty?” he demanded.

“In deference to a most interesting matter that is as yet in abeyance,” Lord Harold replied. “I must confess a grievous sin, Mr. Elliot, on the part of my nephew Kinsfell. You will remember, I am sure, that he discovered the unfortunate Mr. Portal.”

“Yes, yes—”

“But you are not aware, I think, that he discovered something else on Mr. Portal’s person. A most intriguing miniature pendant, showing the likeness of an eye, and probably set upon Portal’s breast by the same hand that drove home the knife.”

Mr. Elliot turned to me in confusion. I smiled at him benignly.

“My nephew, from dubious motives, secured the portrait of the eye about his neck. He gave it into my keeping the following day.”

“The Marquis made away with evidence?” Mr. Elliot exclaimed. “Why, the cunning rogue! I’ll have his head for it.” The uttering of this natural sentiment must immediately have struck him as being in poor taste, and he averted his glittering black eyes from Lord Harold’s face.

“I applaud your feelings,” his lordship observed. “They are commendable, if somewhat ill-phrased. But however reprehensible the act, my nephew feared it could not be undone; and I think it just possible that he acted from the noblest of motives — the desire to shield his sister. She is possessed of grey eyes; and the portrait revealed a similar orb. Poor Kinsfell feared for her implication an Portal’s death, and attempted to prevent it.”

I doubted the extent of this statement’s truth, and thought it more likely Lord Kinsfell had hoped to shield Maria Conyngham, whose name Portal had spoken as he breathed his last; but I knew that Miss Conyngham’s eye was brown, and so forbore from disputing with one of his lordship’s experience and perspicacity.

“I undertook to consult an artist of Miss Austen’s acquaintance, an acknowledged expert in these things; and he, in turn, has applied for information to a quarter that might hopefully yield it. The token was left deliberately as a sign, and I cannot think Mr. Portal’s murder unconnected to the identity of the portrait’s subject. It is that subject’s name we seek, Mr. Elliot, and until we possess it we cannot hope to comprehend the depths of this affair. The letters you now hold, and the fact of the Earl’s presence in Bristol, are the merest fraction of your case.”

“That can be of little account,” Mr. Elliot retorted. “Far better to seize the pair and learn the whole from them at the Assizes.”

“But having acted precipitately once” his lordship countered, “and taken up an innocent man, you should hesitate to do so a second time. It cannot inspire confidence on the part of the public, or ease in the breasts of your benefactors.”[66]

There was a feeling silence. Mr. Elliot availed himself of the Stilton, and chewed it ruminatively. At last he said, “And when do you expect the portrait’s subject to be exposed?”

“I am daily in expectation of intelligence. Having received it, I should not hesitate to impart it to yourself.”

“You must understand how irregular the business is,” Mr. Elliot said. “That portrait should have been turned over to me. As should these letters. You have been grossly behindhand, my lord, in your dealings with the Law.”

“I regret and acknowledge the whole. But you might admit, my good sir,” Lord Harold observed with a smile, “that you gave me little reason to confide in your sense and benevolence. You seemed most easy at the prospect of hanging my nephew, and but for the word of a chairman or two, should still be deaf to reason. I cannot be dissatisfied with my conduct of the affair, and must trust the healing effect of time to do away with your injury.”

Mr. Elliot sighed. “I suppose I must lose not a moment on the Portsmouth road, then.”

“It would seem the logical course,” Lord Harold said comfortably. “Stilton, Jane?”