Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (7 page)

“Is Ann your only sister?” I enquired.

“Elizabeth, my elder, is long since married,” Catherine replied. “We were all so unfortunate as to lose my two brothers to illness and accident; William being carried off while at school in Winchester; and John but a year later at home.”

I had carelessly used the very same names in my request for a manservant; how Mr. Prowting must have felt it, and misunderstood my levity’s cause! I felt a surge of colour to my cheeks. “You have all my sympathy. Were they very young?”

“William was fifteen, and John but nine.”

“How dreadful!” I thought of Mrs. Prowting—of the black-edged handkerchief that appeared to be wedded to her palm—with a deeper comprehension. Despair and grief may appear to greater advantage when writ on an elegant form; but Mrs. Prowting’s large, comfortable bulk, though better suited to laughter, held as much right to suffering as my own.
²

I saw Catherine over the stile in the meadow, with profuse thanks for the gift of eggs and cheese; and as she walked slowly into her house—into that orgy of preparation and exhilarated transport in which she was expected to take no part—I went back to the cottage.

If I hurried, I might just have time to read another of Lord Harold’s papers before I journeyed to Alton, and met the coroner.

Excerpt from the diaries of Lord Harold Trowbridge, dated 12 December 1782, on board the Indiaman
Delos,
bound for Bombay.

. . . it is no bad thing to be a young man of two-and-twenty, with the Paradise of the Subcontinent looming off the bow, and all the riches of a sultan’s court waiting to be plucked. There are the women lodged in all the acceptable quarters—no longer young, or lacking in fortune and looks, and in short the very dross of English gentility, sent out as brides to men they have never met and a life in a climate likely to kill them before very long. They are desperate for sport and fun before the voyage should be over—knowing, from the most ignorant of presentiments, that marriage to a stranger cannot be very agreeable, and seduction from a shipmate must provide present excitement and the comfort of stories for telling hereafter. I have lifted five skirts to date in the languid forenoon of a becalmed passage, and Freddy Vansittart is no less lucky—with his dark looks and his roguish smile, he can win any number of hearts. Stella from Yorkshire will have him, and he does not take care.

We have sunk to betting on the women as we do at cards, the boredom of this voyage being almost insufferable; and on occasion, when I am feeling low, I am thankful to God for Freddy Vansittart—his wild laughter and neck-or-nothing heart are all that stand between me and a pistol ball in the head. Like me, Freddy is a scoundrel and a second son; and if we do not hang together we shall most assuredly hang separately.

I believe I have borrowed that last sentiment from another, but cannot recollect whom.

I am not often so low. In truth, I cannot regret the chain of events that have sent me here—the violence of that meeting at dawn; the cut on Benning’s face that will scar it like my signature forever after; the loss of my father’s good opinion or the anger I met on every side; my mother’s tears or the sober interview with the solicitors. It is not as tho’ Benning died; but his father believed he would, the fever from the wounds having put him on a kind of death-bed; and when one report of the heir’s passing was put out, damnably unproved, the Viscount St. Eustace suffered a fit. In short, the old man was carried off in a matter of hours—and Benning is now Viscount, and must be called by his title, the prospect of which he used to dangle sneeringly before me, all those years ago in school, when he called me a commoner and a spy who should end in the gutter. I hated him then and I hated him that morning when we met in the duelling ground at Hampstead Heath. I wish that I had killed him; his brother is a better man, and like all second sons, I wish him greater justice.

No—if I regret anything at all, it is the stupidity and the waste of those London days. The harlots lounging in the arches of Covent Garden, the befuddlement of drink, the desperate crying of a heart that loved only Horatia, and knew her to be pledged to another. She will be a Viscountess these five months or more, and great with child—tho’ it shall not be Benning’s. I have that satisfaction at least.

And so to exile. Mr. Hastings awaits. “He shall be your envoy to a better life,” His Grace the Duke told me sternly; “pray that you do not return having disgraced him.” The burden is more likely to be reversed. I have heard a little of Mr. Hastings: how he fathered a girl by one partner, and wrested his wife from another; how his slow ascent above his fellows has been managed with cunning and industry. Hastings is a man after my own stamp—a self-made creature, who owes his reputation and fearsome respect to no title or gift of birth. I shall profit by Mr. Hastings; I feel it in my blood.

And we shall both return to England invincible.

Chapter 8

The Man Who
Drank Deep

5 July 1809, cont.
~

T
HE
G
EORGE
I
NN SITS IN THE VERY MIDST OF
A
LTON
’
S
H
IGH
Street, not far from its rival, The Swan, where Mr. Chizzlewit had undertaken to lodge. I had quitted Mr. Barlow’s house only yesterday morning in Joseph’s pony trap; but a revolution of thought and feeling had occurred in the interval that far outstripped a single turn of the globe. I left the George an impoverished and dependant relation; I returned but four-and-twenty hours later an Heiress who had excited the Notice of the Great. Moreover, I had discovered a body—one mysteriously dead; and this must always lend a lady distinction. Mr. Barlow himself handed me down from Mr. Prowting’s gig, and bowed over my hand to the admiration of a group of tradesmen gathered especially for the coroner’s panel. The escort of a local magistrate could only add to my consequence.

“I’ve put the crowner in the back parlour as Mr. Austen always uses come Quarter Day,” Mr. Barlow confided to me in an undertone. “I hope as it will suit. I do not know what Mr. Munro may be accustomed to, in Basingstoke.”

This being a market town where any number of London parties were used to change their post horses, at a quantity of inns bearing the names of Wheatsheaf, Angel, Maidenhead, and Crown, I did not wonder at Mr. Barlow’s quailing before so awful a figure as a Basingstoke man; but I bestowed upon the publican a smile and said, “Any room my brother elects as adequate for his business cannot possibly disappoint.”

We were ushered within, and conducted through the public room to a chamber at the rear of the building, where Mr. Barlow had set a scrubbed oak table and an arrangement of chairs. Always a hospitable man, he had placed a jug of ale on a serving tray and provided a baker’s dozen of glasses for Mr. Munro’s Chosen. These individuals were standing about uneasily near the plank table, waiting for the coroner to appear—and uncertain whether it was permissible to drink the ale until he did. Half the chairs provided for those of us who came to gawk were already filled with people of the town. There was a little bustle of expectation when we entered the room—a glancing at Mr. Prowting and myself, and a muttered communication behind gloved hands—and then the noise died away, and I was conveyed to a seat conveniently near what I judged to be Munro’s chair.

Only one other woman was present in the room: perhaps four-and-twenty years of age, with reddish-blond hair tied in a knot on her head, a worn gown that might once have been red, and a black shawl about her shoulders. From the look of her face, she had been weeping; some relative of the dead man’s, then—his widow perhaps. She was quite alone, and the townsfolk preserved a cordon of distance around her, tho’ seating was scarce.

In the opposite row, not five feet from where I was placed, sat Mr. Middleton and his young friend Julian Thrace. Both rose at my appearance and bowed politely. A third gentleman, unknown to me, made another of their party. A slight figure of unremarkable aspect, he was the sort of man who should rarely excite a lady’s interest; and yet a slow flush suffused his countenance as he met my gaze. A poet, perhaps, ill-suited to the public eye—but my study of the gentleman was curtailed by the approach of Mr. Middleton.

“I am surprised but gratified to find you here, Miss Austen,” he said heartily. “You are come as your brother’s proxy, no doubt. Such attention does you credit; we must hope the exertion is not overpowering.”

“I attempted to dissuade the lady,” Mr. Prowting assured him, “but Miss Austen is firm where she sees her duty.”

“And why not? It is her home that has been violated, after all.”

“Indeed, sir—I believe it is poor Shafto French we must regard as the injured party.” I offered Middleton my hand, and he bent over it with swift gallantry. As when I had first encountered him on horseback a few hours before, I was struck by his vigour—remarkable in a gentleman of advancing years. He must be of an age with the magistrate, but from his general air of health, might have been Mr. Prowting’s son.

“You will observe Jack Hinton behind me,” Middleton confided. “Thrace and I fell in with him here in town, and carried him along from a scandalous desire for gossip. I shall make him acquainted with Miss Austen, eh? We shall all meet tomorrow evening in any case, at the Great House. I have asked Hinton and his sister to dine.”

Mr. Prowting glanced at me doubtfully.

“I should like to meet . . . a man of whom I have heard so much,” I said evenly.

But Mr. Hinton was studiously engrossed in conversation with Julian Thrace, and avoiding all our gaze. His intent was to offer the cut indirect—a glancing insult, and one that might be ascribed simply to diffidence or poor manners. I, however, saw a purpose in his actions: Hinton meant to publish his petty wars against the Austens before all of Alton.

Mr. Middleton frowned and looked perplexed.

“There will be time enough tomorrow for introductions,” I suggested. “The coroner’s panel looks to be upon the point of convention.”

It had been impossible for the proceedings to begin without Mr. Prowting’s presence, but the coroner had awaited only the magistrate’s arrival to make his entrance. A door in the far wall, communicating to a lesser room beyond our own, was opened discreetly and quietly and the man himself strode towards the chair. I liked his looks immediately: he was neatly and elegantly dressed in black superfine and pantaloons; his face was clean-shaven; his gaze direct and uncritical as it roamed the room. I detected intelligence in his wide brow, and an eloquence in the fingers that bespoke the natural philosopher. I was pleasantly surprised. Mr. Munro was something above my usual experience of coroners.

He inclined his head to the assembly, glanced towards the men lounging about the perimeter of the room, and said without preamble: “Have you a foreman?”

“Ellis Watson, sir,” returned a grey-haired fellow as he stepped forward, cap in hand.

“Very well, Mr. Watson, you may urge your panel to take their places. As coroner for Basingstoke, Steventon, and Alton, I call this inquest to order. We are convened to discover the manner of death of one Shafto French, labourer and free man of Alton, and you are each of you charged with the most solemn duty of judging whether Deceased met his end by misadventure, malice aforethought, or his own hand. Mr. Watson, will you come and be sworn?”

Beside me Mr. Prowting sighed heavily, but not with boredom; rather, it was a settling into the familiar and the comforting, a small animal noise akin to a horse in its stable. The magistrate’s gaze was fixed on his colleague, but no hint of his thoughts could be read on his visage. I wondered, fleetingly, if I had taken the full measure of Mr. Prowting. It was possible a brain of some subtlety worked behind his country façade.

The members of the panel, having placed their hands on Mr. Munro’s Bible, were led in single file to the adjacent room from which the coroner had entered. Here, no doubt, the mortal remains of Shafto French reposed, and must be viewed by those charged with determining how the poor man had died. I should have liked to ask Mr. Prowting whether the physician had troubled to anatomise the body, or whether consideration for the feelings of the man’s wife had prevented this excursion into Science—but I was confident the magistrate would regard such a question as grossly unsuited to the experience and sensibility of a lady.
¹
I must trust to the proceedings to unfold what intelligence they would.

An interval of perhaps ten minutes elapsed; the men returned, singly and in groups, with one poor fellow dashing out of the chamber entirely, to be sick as I supposed in Mr. Barlow’s stable yard. The coroner took no notice of this, save to await the man’s return before proceeding. When all were reassembled, Mr. Munro glanced up from his foolscap and pen, eyes roving about the room until they fell upon Mr. Prowting.

“I should like to call Mr. William Prowting of Chawton, who holds the commission of the peace for this county, to be sworn before God and this panel.”

Mr. Prowting rose to his feet, and made his ponderous way towards the enclosure reserved for witnesses at Munro’s right hand. He made his oath, and composed himself with an air of gravity; told the coroner and the townsfolk of Alton how he had assisted his neighbours with the disposal of some heavy articles in the cellar at approximately four o’clock the previous afternoon, and therewith, in all innocence, discovered Shafto French’s remains.

“There was no possible entry to the cellar except through the rooms of the cottage itself?”

Mr. Prowting affirmed that this was so—“despite the hatchway set into the cellar ceiling, a remnant of the place’s former usage as a public house.”

“The hatch was closed at the time of the body’s discovery?”

“Closed and barred from within. I opened the hatch myself, as I just described to you, and may attest that the dust had not been disturbed.”

I wondered at that statement; in the dim light of my tallow candle, little could have been observed of either wooden bar or the dust that coated it. But it was not for me to say what Mr. Prowting had seen; it was not my hand that had lifted the hatch’s bar.

“And the new tenants of Chawton Cottage opened the house only yesterday?”

“Mrs. Austen and her daughter arrived before the gate at half past two o’clock, as I observed from my parlour window directly opposite.”

“You paid a call upon the household soon thereafter?”

It was a point of conjecture whether Mr. Prowting would now condescend to mention the appearance of so extraordinary a visitor as Mr. Chizzlewit, with liveried lackeys behind; but the former was a magistrate of long standing, and had been trained to observe the brevities of a public proceeding. Mr. Chizzlewit did not pertain to Shafto French; furthermore, Mr. Chizzlewit had treated him, William Prowting, with the grossest condescension. Mr. Chizzlewit might hang in obscurity for the nonce.

“I wished to afford the ladies an interval to investigate the cottage in privacy,” the magistrate told the room, “and thus paid my call of welcome perhaps half an hour after they arrived.”

“Very well. Did you observe any sort of disturbance, Mr. Prowting, to the cellar floor where Deceased lay?”

“I did not. The place was as quiet as a tomb,” the magistrate observed; and considered too late of his choice of words. “From the closed air of the room, I should have thought the place shut up a decade or more. I was astonished to discover the remains.”

“You did not notice a shifting of the dust,” Munro persisted, “on the surface of the floor, as might have been occasioned by the passage of feet?”

Mr. Prowting replied in the negative.

“Nor yet any stain, as of water spilled and later dried?”

At this last question, I straightened in my chair with interest. To what end did the coroner’s questions lead?

Mr. Prowting had seen no stain of dried water. “The floor being unpaved, and the dirt of a sandy composition, any moisture might probably have drained away. The body, after all, had been lying where it was some days.”

Mr. Munro might have protested this statement, or wondered how Prowting could be so sure of the date of death; but it was common knowledge by now that French’s face had been entirely et away—and nobody would dispute the conclusions to be drawn from the activity of the rats.

The magistrate stood down.

I awaited with interest the summoning of the next witness; and it was, indeed, myself—who after being sworn, attested simply that I had never set foot in my present abode before yesterday afternoon; that I had not been in Chawton, indeed, except for a fleeting visit to the Great House two years before; that I had received the keys to the cottage from Mr. Barlow, the George’s publican, who at my brother the Squire’s instruction had held them in safekeeping ever since the departure of the previous tenant, Widow Seward, four months earlier; and finally, that I had ventured to the cellar only after Mr. Prowting appeared to assist me in the conveyance of some heavy articles requiring storage.

It was probable, I thought as I made my way back to my chair, that the entire town of Alton had now concluded that a hoard of jewels—a king’s ransom, Henry had called it—was locked in my cellar. I had been wise to shift Lord Harold’s papers to my bedchamber.

“The coroner summons Jemima French.”

The woman I had observed at the front of the room rose before Mr. Munro, and was apparently stricken instantly with paralysis.

“You may take this chair, Mrs. French,” he said with blunt kindness, “and make your oath, if you please.”

She moved waveringly towards the proffered seat, and I saw with pity that she was increasing.
A hopeful family,
Mr. Prowting had said. How many children did Shafto French leave behind? And how ill-provided for?

“You are Jemima French, wife of Deceased?”

“I am, sir,” she answered faintly.

“I will not trouble you long. When did you last see your husband in life, Mrs. French?”