Murder at Mansfield Park (30 page)

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I recall that Mr Bertram kept him waiting upwards of half an hour. A petty gesture, I grant, but perhaps we might forgive him, when we consider the injuries the family has suffered at your brother’s hands. And as you said, only a few minutes ago, it would have been the work of a moment to slip up to Miss Julia’s chamber.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said, with enforced patience, ‘if he had known where he was going. Do you ask me to believe my brother to be acquainted with the whereabouts of the sleeping-rooms of the young ladies of the house? I doubt he has even been upstairs. It is a ridiculous theory.’

Maddox was undeterred. ‘He might have made a shrewd guess, based on all those other great houses in which he has been employed, or he might simply have followed Mrs Baddeley, without her being at all aware of it. It is not quite so ridiculous a theory as you maintain, Miss Crawford. Indeed, I wondered at the time why Mr Crawford was so determined to pay his call that evening, late and dark as it was. It might have waited until the morning, might it not? But for reasons of his own, your brother insisted on presenting himself at the Park without delay. Having gone thus far, let me postulate a little further. Let us say that your brother returned to the Park some days earlier than he would have us believe, and that he encountered his wife, fresh off the coach from London. Let us say that they argued—argued so bitterly that he was moved to strike her. Faced with the full enormity of his crime, he flees the estate, but not without first perceiving Miss Julia in the park. He does not know what she has seen—or if she has indeed seen any thing—but when he returns some days later, feigning to have arrived directly from Enfield, he discovers that this possible witness has been all this time unconscious. He has an unlooked-for opportunity to silence her for ever, and he seizes it. Without remorse.’

There was no doubt of the colour in her cheeks now, but the reason for it was not entirely clear to him. It might be anger at his impertinence, but it might equally be fear of discovery. Ever since he had learned that Crawford was Miss Price’s abductor, he had been convinced that he was by far her most likely killer. Logic, observation, and experience all argued for it, and if it was indeed so, he had no doubt that this young woman was in her brother’s confidence; Crawford would have confessed every thing to her on his return, even if she had not known of his plans for the elopement until after it had taken place. Indeed, Maddox could easily see Mary Crawford as far more than a mere
confidante
; he knew she had loved the girl, but she loved her brother more, and if Julia Bertram’s silence was the only means to save him from the gallows, then it was a price she would be prepared to pay. If there was a woman in existence, who would have the courage, the resolution, and the
sang-froid
to carry through such a crime, he could believe Miss Crawford to be that woman.

‘I do not believe him capable of such a thing,’ she said at last, in a tone of utter dejection, as if all her strength were gone.

‘You did not believe him capable of lying, and yet he did.’

She turned to look at him, as he continued, ‘He lied to you about being at Sir Robert Ferrars’s estate—indeed, I believe he even wrote you a letter that he claimed to have sent from there, which can only have been designed to deceive you. And if that were not enough, he lied to you about his marriage. I am sorry to be the bearer of such news—believe me, or not, as you will, but it gives me no pleasure to tell you this. I have just this hour received word from Fraser in London. He has spoken to Mrs Jellett, the gentlewoman who keeps the lodgings in Portman-square, and it is not a pretty story she had to tell. There were vehement arguments almost from the day they moved in— arguments loud enough to wake the rest of the house, and to make Mrs Jellett apprehensive for the reputation of her establishment. And that, I am sorry to say, was not all. The day before Mr Crawford departed—without settling their bills—there was a quarrel of such ferocity that Mrs Jellett was constrained to call the constable. She saw the marks of violence with her own eyes. And yet he told me—as he no doubt told
you—
that they were happy.’

He watched her for a moment, awaiting a response, but she kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead.

‘All things considered, Miss Crawford,’ he said at last, ‘I believe my enquiries are nearing their conclusion. Having spoken to you, I am more and more confident of that. An event is imminent. Yes indeed, an event is imminent.’

Henry did not return from his ride for some hours, and the shadows were lengthening across the parsonage lawn, when Mary at last heard the sound of a horse in the stable-yard. Her sister had tried in vain to induce her to come indoors and take some rest, and had only with the greatest reluctance been persuaded to return to the house. Mary walked to the archway that led from the drive to the yard, and stood watching Henry, as he dismounted. He had provided himself with a black coat and arm-band, and she saw at once, and with inexpressible pain, that the assumption of formal mourning appeared to have deprived him of his quick, light step, and the poised and confident air that had so distinguished him in the past; he seemed weary to his very soul, and when he looked up and saw her, she knew from his face that the same desperate weariness was also visible in her own.

‘Will you walk with me, Henry? Mr Maddox has been here.’

He looked at her, and then nodded gravely. ‘Of course. But take care
how
you talk to me. Do not tell me any thing now, which Mr Maddox would not want you to disclose. I would not wish you entangled in my own difficulties any more than is absolutely necessary. I would protect you from that, even if I can do nothing else.’

She sighed. ‘I do believe he spoke to me with the express intent that I should convey every word of it to you. The more I see of him, the more I think this to be the most insidious of all his schemes. He issues information, little by little, here and there, and then sits back to watch how it takes its effect—how we behave, what we do, what we say. It is as if we are all his puppets—mere clockwork toys, or pawns on a chessboard he can manoeuvre at his pleasure.’

‘In that case,’ said Henry, with a gloomy smile, ‘I cannot be afraid of hearing any thing you wish to say. Do not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.’

It was not long in the telling. The death of Julia Bertram, the suspicions of Maddox, and the news from London, were all told in a very few words. Such was the sympathy between brother and sister, so deep their mutual love and understanding, that she needed only to relate the facts, for him to comprehend all that she had suffered, and all that she now feared.

When she had finished, he drew her arm through his, as they walked, and she could see that he was troubled.

‘I do not know what pains me more, Mary: the grief you are feeling on account of Julia Bertram, or my own shame at having lied to you.’ He flushed. ‘In that respect, if no other, Maddox told you the truth—which is more than I can say on my own account. I did lie about being at Ferrars’s place, but I did so because I did not want to put you in an invidious position, by asking you, in your turn, to conceal where I really was from our sister and the Bertrams. And I lied about the true state of relations between myself and Fanny because—well, because I was ashamed. Embarrassed and ashamed—that is the truth of it. I did not want to admit that a course of action I undertook from motives of sheer mercenary selfishness, and which has injured so many, did nothing but bring misery on her, and humiliation on myself. When all the excitement of the intrigue was over, a few—a very few—days were sufficient to teach me a bitter lesson. I learned to value sweetness of temper, purity of mind, and excellence of principles in a wife, because I knew by then I would never find them in the woman I had married. I had thought such qualities insignificant compared to the far greater misery of pecuniary distress; I had thought the comforts of rank, position, and money would far outweigh the little inconveniences of a bitter and spiteful wife, who would forever be reminding me that I had dragged her down from the exalted sphere of life to which she might have aspired. Barely two days in London proved to her that she might have bought herself a title with a fortune as large as hers, and she never thereafter allowed me to forget it.’

They walked a little further in silence, before he turned to her. ‘Are you cold, Mary? Your hands are shaking.’

‘Our sister will scold,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘I have, as usual, forgotten to bring my shawl. Please, go on.’

‘There is not much else to tell. You know my character, Mary—you know my faults, as well as I know them myself. In short, I could not trust myself. Indeed, I should defy any man of warm spirits and natural ardour of mind to govern his temper in the face of such incessant and violent recriminations. She had raised her hand to me once; I did not stay to be tempted to pay her back in kind.’

Mary looked at him in horror, only now comprehending the full import of what he was saying, and how it related to what Maddox had told her. ‘
She
raised her hand to
you
?’

He nodded. ‘I do not cut a very manly figure, do I?’ he said, with grim irony. ‘A man beaten about the face by his own wife—how could I hold my head up in public ever again? I would be laughed out of every club in London, and pilloried for a henpecked husband and emasculated milksop.’ He laughed, but the sound was hollow, and his smile was forced.

‘And so, you left her?’ she said, gently.

‘To my everlasting shame. She did not leave me,
I
left
her
—left her alone in town, where she had no friend but me.
My own wife
. I only found out that she had gone when I had a letter from Mrs Jellett, asking me for the money owed on our lodgings. She had presumed—why should she not?—that Fanny had followed me to the address in Drury-lane I had confided to her. I knew better. I returned to Portman-square, and began to search for her. That part, at least, is true.’

‘And Enfield? I still cannot comprehend why you should have chosen to go there.’

‘It was the only place I could think of where I might hope for a moment’s peace and solitude—some where I might gain a little breathing time, while I prepared myself to face the Bertrams.’

He stopped and turned to face her, his face grey with unease. ‘All I can say is, that it did not seem such an injudicious choice
then
. But as a consequence I cannot prove I was not here in Mansfield when she arrived. I cannot prove I did not kill her. I cannot even say—with truth—that I did not want to be free of her; that I did not, in some small and shameful part of my heart,
want
her dead. Maddox has his motive, Mary, and he is gaining on me—he is closing in. If he does not soon find the true perpetrator of this crime, I am a dead man.’

CHAPTER XIX

Mary went to her bed that night in such an agony of mind as she had never yet suffered. The tumults of the last dreadful weeks were nothing to what she endured now; she had not known the human mind capable of bearing such vicissitudes. She saw, only too clearly, what she should do; it was not merely her knowledge of her brother that told her he was guiltless, but the words that she had heard from Julia Bertram’s own lips, and which no-one else would ever hear now, if she herself were not to communicate them. But was she prepared to take such a terrible step? Was she willing to send the man she loved to certain death on the gallows? Because that, she believed, would be the inevitable consequence of her disclosure. Henry might have more obvious motives for killing his wife, but she knew that some might consider Edmund Norris to have reasons that were scarcely less cogent, and he, like Henry, had no alibi for the morning of Fanny’s death.Were Julia Bertram’s last words to become generally known, the evidence against him would appear all but conclusive. It was an appalling prospect: say nothing, and watch her innocent brother condemned; speak, and see Edmund hang in his place.

She could not imagine any possibility of sleep, and lay awake for many hours, passing from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror, and from hot fits of fever to cold. But shortly before two o’clock her bodily weakness finally overcame her, and she slipped into a shallow and disturbed slumber, only to wake at dawn in a terror that made such an impression upon her, as almost to overpower her reason. She had fallen into a dark and wandering dream, in which she was barefoot, walking across the park, as the mist rose from the hollows, and the owls shrieked in the dark trees. All at once she found herself at the edge of the channel—the dank and fetid pit yawned beneath her very feet. She was overcome with fear, and dared not go any farther, but some thing drew her on, and she saw with revulsion that the body was still there at the bottom of the chasm, still wrapped in its crimson cloak and bloody dress, the face already rotting, and maggots eating at the suppurating flesh. She turned away, sickened, but Maddox stood behind her, and took hold of her arm, forcing her to look, forcing her to the very brink. And now she saw that Henry and Edmund were standing at either end of the trench—she saw them face each other, their countenances blank of all expression, then draw their swords with a rasp of polished metal. Minute after minute they fought over the body, notwithstanding all her prayers and tears, trampling the dissolving carcase beneath their feet, and staining their shirts with runnels of blood that smoked in the cold air. Then in the space of a moment, Henry was suddenly in the ascendant, pinning his opponent against the earth, and holding his sword across Edmund’s throat; Mary cried out, ‘No! No!’ and as her brother looked up to where she stood, Edmund drew back his sword, and ran his rival through the thigh. Henry slipped to his knees, his eyes all the while on Mary’s face, fixing her with a look of unutterable agony and reproach. She turned to Edmund for mercy, but he rejected her pleas with arrogant disdain, and pushed the point of his sword slowly, slowly through his adversary’s heart. She crawled towards him, as Maddox threw earth and dirt down upon her dying brother, and the rotting corpse of his dead wife; then she awoke in a cold sweat, real tears on her cheeks, and the frightful images still before her eyes.