Murder at Mansfield Park (28 page)
How Kitty Jeffries had come to discover the secret, Mary could not guess; all she did know, was that discover it she had, and Maddox had wrung it from her. Even now, she thought, he must be waiting only for Julia’s recovery to question and apprehend her, and she recalled with a tremor of sick dread her own brother’s words as to the fate that must inevitably attend the perpetrator of such a crime. She started up and began to pace the room, unable to keep her seat with any composure. She could see no way to obviate such terrible consequences, no other way to explicate what she had heard than by casting Julia—all unlikely as it seemed—in the repellent light of her cousin’s murderess.
She stopped by the window, and pulled aside the heavy curtain. It was moonlight, and all before her was solemn and lovely, clothed in the brilliancy of an unclouded summer night. She rested her face against the pane, and the sensation of the cool glass on her flushed cheeks made her suddenly aware how stifling the room had become. She went across to the door, flung it open, and stood for a moment on the threshold. The great house was still and noiseless—or was it? She knew her nerves were more than usually agitated, but she thought, for one fleeting instant, that she had detected a movement in the dark shadows, beyond the wan circle of light cast by the lamp. It was not the first time she had felt such a sensation in recent days, and she suspected Maddox was deploying his men as spies. Had Stornaway been deputed to listen at Julia’s door, and if he had, what had he heard?
She wavered for a moment, wondering whether to seek the man out, and challenge him, but a few minutes’ reflection told her that nothing she could do would make any difference, and whatever the man might have gathered by stealth, would no doubt only serve to confirm what his master had already obtained by violence. She returned into the room with an even heavier heart, and took her place once again at the bed-side. Julia had recommenced her feverish and confused murmurings, and Mary was so preoccupied, and so fatigued by her many hours of watching, that it was some moments before she discerned that the tenor of the girl’s ramblings had undergone a subtle but momentous change.
‘I can never be free of it—never erase it—never blot it out—that face, those eyes—cannot bear it—pretend I never saw, pretend I never heard—no, no, do not look upon me—I will not tell! I will not tell!’
The precise import of these words forced itself slowly but inexorably upon Mary’s consciousness. It was not
Julia
who had killed Fanny, but
someone else.
Julia’s previous burst of feeling did not signify her own guilt, but her horror at having seen her own cousin being brutally done to death, and by someone she herself knew. It was no wonder the girl was distraught—no wonder she was in terror—
Mary’s heart leapt in hope—and as soon froze, as the girl sprang up suddenly in the bed, her lips white, and her eyes staring sightlessly across the room. ‘Do not look upon me!—I will not tell—a secret—always, always a secret!— Edmund—
Edmund
!’
Charles Maddox was, at that moment, standing in silence on the garden terrace. He was not a man who required many hours of repose, and it had become his habit to spend much of the night watching, taking the advantage of peace and serenity to marshal his thoughts. Living as he did in the smoke and dirt of town, he could but rarely, as now, enjoy a moonlit landscape, and the contrast of a clear dark sky with the deep shade of woods. He gazed for a while at the constellations, picking out Arcturus and the Bear, as he had been taught as a boy, while reflecting that moonlight had practical as well as picturesque qualities: a messenger could ride all night in such conditions as this, and that being so, Maddox might, with luck, receive the information he required in the course of the following day. He had sent Fraser to London, to enquire at Portman-square as to the exact state of affairs between Mr and Mrs Crawford during their brief honeymoon; the husband had claimed they were happy, but every circumstance argued against it. Maddox had seen the clenched fist, the contracted brow, and the barely suppressed anger writ across his face. He would not be the first man Maddox had known, to conceal violent inclinations beneath a debonair and amiable demeanour, and this one had a motive as good as any of them: not love, or revenge, but money, and a great deal of it.
Maddox could not have told, precisely, how long he had been standing there, meditating the histories of his past cases, when he heard the sound of an approaching horse, the echo magnified unduly in the stillness of the air. He abandoned his reverie at once, and proceeded to the front of the house, to find a man dismounting in some haste. He was a medical gentleman, to judge by his bag, but he was not the physician Maddox had seen at Mansfield before.
‘Do I take it Mr Gilbert is unavailable?’ he asked.
The man looked at him with suspicion, as if wondering at his impertinence. ‘I am sorry, sir. I do not recollect that we have been introduced.’
‘My apologies. My name is Charles Maddox. The family have requested my assistance in resolving the unfortunate business of Mrs—that is—Miss Price’s death.’
The man nodded. ‘I had heard as much in the village; indeed, they are talking of little else. I am Phillips, the apothecary. Mr Gilbert has been detained at a lying-in at Locking Hall. He sent word to me to attend here in his stead.’
‘The patient is worse, I apprehend?’ said Maddox.
‘Indeed so, sir,’ said Phillips. ‘I must hasten to examine her. A great deal of time has already been lost.’
He handed his mount to the stable-boy, and began to hurry towards the house, but Maddox kept pace with him.
‘Have you been informed as to the symptoms?’
‘Of course. The message was most precise, though I do not see that it is any concern of yours.’
‘Nonetheless, if you would.’
‘Very well,’ said Phillips, stopping for a moment before the door, his gloves in one hand. ‘The pupils are contracted, the patient flushed about the face, the respiration raucous, and the pulse slow. Now if you will excuse me, I am expected.’
Maddox caught his arm; his face had assumed a sudden and uncharacteristic gravity. ‘Will you permit me to accompany you, Mr Phillips?’ he said, quickly. ‘It may prove to be of the utmost importance.’
The apothecary hesitated a moment, and Maddox made a shrewd guess that he was only too conscious of his subordinate and substitutionary status at the Park, and would, in consequence, lack the confidence to refuse such a request, or to question the authority of a man who appeared to enjoy the full confidence of Sir Thomas, and to be residing in his house.
‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Follow me.’
Had Maddox known no better, he might have presumed that it was Mrs Baddeley Mr Phillips had been summoned to attend. She it was, at first sight, who appeared to be most in need of medicinal assistance; her face was pale, and she had sunk breathless into a chair, one hand at her side, and her aromatic vinegar in the other. Miss Crawford, he could see, was divided between her desire to alleviate the housekeeper’s immediate distress, and a more painful concern for Julia Bertram, who seemed to be in a state of profound stupor. More alarming still, the young girl’s countenance was dark with suffused blood, and her features utterly still and seemingly lifeless.
‘How long has this present condition persisted?’ asked Phillips, forestalling Maddox’s own enquiry.
‘An hour—perhaps two,’ replied Miss Crawford. ‘Immediately prior to that she became suddenly agitated and distressed—she began to talk for the first time in days. But,’ she faltered, her cheeks flushed, ‘there was no sense in the words. Since that time I have watched her sink into the pitiful state in which you now see her. I have given her two further doses of the cordial Mr Gilbert prescribed, but it seems only to make her worse.’
Maddox noted her countenance as she spoke these words, just as he had noted her start back with a frown at his approach; he wondered at it, but he had not then the time to ponder its meaning. To his eyes, it was evident, only too evident, what afflicted the patient, and he watched Phillips commence a prolonged physical examination with increasing impatience, succeeding in checking his anger only by reminding himself that the symptoms were, indeed, easily mistaken for those of common fever, and the alternative was hardly likely to have formed part of the experience of a country apothecary.
‘She has been poisoned, man,’ he cried at last. ‘Can you not see that? She shews all the signs of having ingested an excessive—indeed fatal—dose of laudanum. The initial excitement under the effects of the stimulant, and then the slow lethargy—the strident breathing—the dreadful colour of the face.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Maddox,’ said Phillips. ‘I did not know you included a medical proficiency among your many other accomplishments.’
‘I do not, sir. But I have had considerable experience of unnatural death, and the means by which it may be brought about. I have, alas, seen cases like this before. If I am right, we will soon see her succumb to an even deeper lassitude, and her breath and pulse will slow to the point of absolute torpor. If we do not act at once, this deadly listlessness will become irreversible; she will sink lower and lower, and we will not be able to bring her back.’
All the time he was speaking he had kept his eyes fixed on Mary Crawford’s face, and had seen the grief and horror his words occasioned; he saw, too, that if she did not like him, she did, at least, believe him, and her first action, when he had concluded, was to turn at once to Phillips, and beg him with passionate ardour to comply with whatever he suggested. Mr Phillips, however, was extremely reluctant to cede the right to determine the correct mode of treatment to someone completely unqualified to pronounce in such cases. Nor, it seemed, did he agree with the diagnosis.
‘I cannot concur with you, sir,’ he said, coldly. ‘I attended the young lady some days ago, at the onset of her present indisposition. I am of the decided opinion that this is merely a particularly virulent case of putrid fever. I propose to bleed her, in order to suppress the fever in its forming state, and relieve the vascular congestion. I have complete confidence in the efficacy of this method of proceeding, as I do of Mr Gilbert’s agreement with what I propose.’
‘It seems to me, sir,’ retorted Maddox, ‘that you are more afraid of deviating from Mr Gilbert’s opinion, than you are of losing your patient. Bleeding will not help her now— indeed, it is very like to kill her, in the weakened state to which she is now reduced.We must apply a purge, and hope to expel the poison from the gut before it can be absorbed into the body. There is no time to lose—we do not even know when the fatal dose was administered. It may already be too late.’
He had hoped to shock the man out of his timid complacency, and his words had their effect—though not, at first, on the apothecary.
‘What do you mean, sir?’ cried Mrs Baddeley in terror, rising unsteadily from her chair. ‘Do you talk of
poison
? And in this house? The poor girl has had nothing but Mr Gilbert’s cordial, administered with my own hands.’
‘That may very well be the case,’ said Maddox, striding to the table of medicines, and beginning to examine them. ‘But are you in a position to swear that there was never a moment—never a single moment—in the last two days, when Miss Julia has been left alone?’
Mrs Baddeley flushed, and the two women exchanged a glance.
‘I see you cannot,’ continued Maddox. ‘And here, I believe, is the result. This bottle breathes faintly of laudanum. Mr Phillips—your opinion, if you please.’
The apothecary came forward, and lifted the bottle to his nose, before looking up with an expression of horror. ‘This is most alarming—someone has clearly tampered with the cordial. Heaven knows what Mr Gilbert will have to say to this—’
‘Your efforts would be better directed to assisting your patient, Mr Phillips. Mrs Baddeley, do you happen to have a supply of ipecacuanha in the house? It may serve, as an emetic.’
‘I believe so, sir. It is long since I have had need of that evil physic, but there may still be a small quantity in the chest in my room. I will need to fetch the key.’
‘Then if you feel strong enough, I would ask you to make haste there with Mr Phillips, so that he may make up a tincture.’
‘Mrs Baddeley is not well, sir,’ intervened Miss Crawford, as the door closed behind them. ‘I know the chest to which she refers, and could just as easily have gone in her place.’
‘I wished to speak to you alone, Miss Crawford,’ said Maddox, ‘and prepare you for what is to come. Once the emetic has taken effect, we must try to get Miss Julia from her bed, and revive her a little by moving her about the room. With luck, we may prevent the onset of the final stupor. But it will not be an easy task, and may tax even your strength and fortitude. If you do not feel yourself equal to it, I will send for one of the servants, but, for reasons that will no doubt become clear to you when you have had time to reflect, I would prefer to keep the matter between our four selves, at least for the moment.’
She did not answer at once, and when he turned his eyes towards her white and horrified face, he perceived that she was already blaming herself. She had administered the last doses of the cordial; she—all unwitting—had therefore been the purveyor of the poison; how she might feel if the girl were to die, he had not, then, the energy to contemplate.
He did not think it likely that either of them would forget the night they endured together, at Julia Bertram’s bed-side. The darkness without was nothing to the grim work they undertook within. The ipecacuanha brought upon such violent reachings as seemed to tear the girl’s frail constitution in pieces, and more than once he wondered whether the cure might not be more deadly than the malady, and he would prove, at the last, to be a murderer, not a saviour. He saw, too, that Mary Crawford was beset by doubts of a similar melancholy order, but she never uttered a word of doubt or misgiving, and directed her efforts to assisting Mr Phillips, and accomplishing the charge before them. And it was a soul-harrowing task; the reachings were soon followed by a foul-smelling vomit, and a sudden gush of liquid smelling strongly of laudanum, and even when the basins had been removed, and the patient cleansed, there was no possibility of rest. Knowing the state of prostration which would necessarily follow, and the stimulant measures necessary to counter it, if death were to be averted, Maddox had them take her bodily from the bed, and toil hour after hour by turns, half-carrying, half-dragging her cold and insensible body about the room.