The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen (27 page)

Where are they then, those little Lefroys?” Fanny asked as we walked up the path to the cottage.

“I left them all behind.” Anna grinned. “Now that Ben is Rector of Ashe we can afford a nursemaid.” Her eyes shone with excitement as she described the new gown she had bought for the wedding—and who could blame her? The days she had had to herself since her marriage must have been very few indeed.

“You won’t mind having Jane’s old bed, will you?” Cass asked as she took her valise.

“Of course not,” Anna replied. “I don’t believe in ghosts—and even if I did, I’m sure Aunt Jane would never harm me.”

I couldn’t help wishing it was me who had been given Jane’s old bed; what a bittersweet thing it would have been to draw those dimity curtains around me and remember the evenings and nights we had spent in that treasured space.

“I’ve had to put you and Miss Sharp in my old room,” Cass went on, “because James-Edward is going in the spare room and Martha still needs hers—for tonight at least.” She gave a self-conscious smile, which Anna returned with a giggle.

“It’s a strange sort of wedding, isn’t it?” she said. “Who would have thought Martha Lloyd would become a blushing bride at her age!”

“I suppose it is unusual,” Cass replied, “but Martha is such a good woman: she deserves whatever happiness comes her way.”

It
was
hard to imagine Martha as a bride. I supposed that the arrangement between her and Frank Austen was essentially a practical one: he would get someone to care for his children while he was away at sea and she would have a home of her own to run as she chose.

I went back to helping Cass in the kitchen, leaving Fanny and Anna to themselves in the parlor. Later on, when Fanny had gone back to the Great House and Cass was putting the finishing touches to the pastries, Anna and I went upstairs to unpack.

“Fanny thinks she is with child,” she said, as she shook out the spotted satin gown she had carried with her all the way from Basingstoke.

“She told me.” I nodded. “She’s very afraid, I think.”

“The poor girl’s spent the past eight years trying to prevent it. Goodness knows how she managed—I wish I knew her secret!” Anna gave me a wry smile. “Anyway, I tried to put her mind at rest.”

“What did you say?”

“Well, Martha always gives me something for my confinements. It’s a truly vile mixture of licorice, figs, and aniseed. It works pretty well if you can get it down. There’s a posset she makes too, which helps with the after pains and increases the milk once the baby has come.”

“I should think Martha has people queuing up for those,” I said.

“All the married women in the village ask for them. And Aunt Cass always takes them with her when she goes to help anyone at a lying-in.”

I was arranging my nightdress on the pillow when she said this and I remember stopping dead, just staring at my own hands. This, I thought, could be the final link in the chain: Cass was with Elizabeth for the birth of that last child—and she would have taken Martha’s medicines with her. Was
that
how Mary Austen had murdered her rival? Had she tampered with the bottles before Cass packed them up?

“Are you all right?” Anna was beside me, peering into my face.

“Oh, yes.” I gave her a bright smile. “I was just thinking about Fanny’s baby, wondering if it would be a boy or a girl.”

“A boy, I should think, knowing her,” Anna laughed. “She always comes up trumps, doesn’t she? Not like me, with six girls to find husbands for!”

“I’m glad you were able to talk to Fanny,” I said. “You’re just what she needs, you know.”

“Well, I feel sorry for her, actually: my stepmother’s always holding her up as an example—telling me I could have married as well as she has if I’d only waited—but her husband’s not exactly Mr. Darcy, is he? I don’t think she loves him; in fact, I don’t think she even
likes
him very much.”

“I hope the baby will bring her some solace, in that case,” I replied. After a pause, I said: “I suppose your stepmother will be coming to the wedding?”

“I think she will be there, yes,” she said, “although it’s by no means certain. She lives in Newbury now, which is not vastly far from Winchester, but she uses the distance as an excuse not to visit Chawton very often these days. She hasn’t been down here nearly as much as she used to when my father was alive. It’s partly because of the business over Uncle Henry, I think.”

“Oh?” I bent over my valise and drew out my hairbrush and nightcap, trying to disguise my avid interest in what she might divulge.

“You know how much money he lost?”

“Your Aunt Jane did tell me.” I nodded.

“Well, shortly after my father died, the crown sent my stepmother a demand for eight hundred pounds. He was one of the guarantors, you see, and as his widow, she was bound to pay.”

“Eight hundred pounds?” This was more than the value of both the houses Mrs. Raike had left me.

“It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? Of course, when my father agreed to it he thought he’d be coming into a fortune anyway, and it wouldn’t matter if the crown ever came chasing him for it.”

“You mean the inheritance from the Leigh-Perrots?”

“Yes.” Anna grunted. “Can you believe Aunt L. P. is still alive? She’s eighty-three! Who would have thought she’d outlive Papa?”

Mary, probably
, I thought grimly. What a shock it must have been, after losing Henry to another woman, to discover that she was going to be bled dry for his debts. “What did your stepmother do?” I asked. “Was she able to settle it?”

“She had to, in the end, although goodness knows how she raised the money. She tried asking Uncle Edward, but he said he was having a hard time finding his own share of what was owed. Then she asked for a meeting with Uncle Henry to talk it all over. They were supposed to meet at a tearoom in Basingstoke, but he didn’t turn up. You can imagine how that went down.”

Only
too
well
, I wanted to reply—but of course, I said nothing of the sort.

“I thought it served her right, actually. She was always needling Papa about how well Uncle Henry had done and what charming manners he had.” She made a face. “Are all stepmothers as spiteful as her, do you think?” Anna was unaware of the resonance her words had for me. I murmured something in reply, the substance of which I can’t recall, for my mind was racing ahead again. How, I wanted to know, could the widow of a country parson find eight hundred pounds? Mary was known within the family for being money-minded, but from what Jane had told me, Henry’s bankruptcy had hit them hard. James had lost several hundred pounds when the bank collapsed, so there couldn’t have been much left when the crown came knocking on Mary’s door.

“Where did your stepmother go when she gave up the rectory?” I asked.

“She went to Bath at first,” Anna replied. “She took Caroline with her, of course. James-Edward was at Oxford by then so he didn’t go. After a few months, she realized she couldn’t afford to stay there. So she moved to a place called Daylesford in Gloucestershire to stay with a friend. In the end, she found a house to rent in Newbury.”

Daylesford
. The name sounded familiar, but it took me a while to remember why. For some reason it triggered an image of Mrs. Raike’s cousin, Miss Gowerton, eating lavender cake in the pastry shop in Bath. I frowned at my hairbrush as I laid it on the dressing table. “What was the name of the friend in Gloucestershire?”

“Lord, I can’t remember!” Anna said. “Something beginning with an ‘H,’ I think: Harris or Hargreaves or something. Why? Do you know her?”

“I might,” I said. “Was it Hastings?”

***

I lay awake for hours that night, staring up at the tenting of what had once been Cassandra’s bed, listening to Anna’s slow, rhythmic breathing coming from the place where Jane should have been. I raged inside at the thought of that sweet, bright life ebbing away as the poison worked its evil on her body. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Mary Austen, red-lipped and feline, as I had seen her in my dreams all those years before at the White Hart Inn. If she had come to the cottage that night I swear I would have killed her.

But
you
have
no
proof.

I heard Jane’s voice as clearly as if she had been lying beside me. She was right, of course; I had not one shred of evidence to unmask Mary Austen as a poisoner. I turned onto my side, certain that sleep would never come to me in this fevered state. Through the wall I could hear Cass. Tucked up in her mother’s old bed, she was snoring in just the same way. From the parlor down below Martha’s voice drifted up to me. Like me, she was too worked up to think of sleep. She was chattering away about the wedding to James-Edward, who had arrived just as we were all going to bed. I could only catch parts of their conversation, but I heard enough to learn that Mary had gone ahead to Winchester with Caroline, where she would be spending the night with a friend.

Another
friend
, I thought. Mary seemed very adept at finding people to help her out of tricky situations. I wondered what part Mrs. Hastings had played in the resurrection of Mary’s finances after the blow from the crown. It must have been her, not her husband, who came to Mary’s aid, for I had read the death notice for Warren Hastings in the obituary column of
The
Times
the year after Jane’s passing.

I cast my mind back to the last time I had seen them. Mary had been sitting next to me, at the ball in Bath, when Mr. Hastings had come to ask me to dance. Yet he had not acknowledged her presence in any way. Were they strangers at that point, then? Had she gotten to know the Hastings later on? Warren Hastings had died the year before James Austen, so perhaps Mrs. Hastings was in Bath at the same time as Mary, for the same reason. I tried to imagine the old dame with the snake eyes and the outrageous hats walking arm-in-arm around the circus with her new friend. Why, I thought, would Mrs. Hastings act in such a generous manner to someone she had only just met? Why would she offer a temporary home to a woman like Mary? A parson’s widow who had neither warmth nor charm to recommend her?

I decided that they must have gotten together well before that, sometime after my visit to Bath. But then I thought of an obstacle to the friendship: Mary hated Eliza, whom Warren Hastings doted on. How could she possibly have borne his company? How could she have listened to him singing the praises of a woman she had banned from her own home?

Perhaps it was this very hatred, I thought, that had formed a bond between the two women. I recalled the look in those cold eyes when Mrs. Hastings found out about my connection with Eliza. What was it Mrs. Raike had said afterward? I scoured my memory for the conversation we had had upon quitting the Pump Room. It was something about Warren Hastings’s will: some fear of his wife’s that he would leave his estate to Eliza instead of her sons. I began to wonder if Mary Austen had played some part in preventing this, to the eternal gratitude of Mrs. Hastings. But what could she possibly have done? How could she have come between Eliza and the Hastings fortune?

My thoughts returned to the ball in Bath, to the conversation I had had with Warren Hastings while we danced. He had been asking about Eliza. Gently probing me about what I had observed on my visit to London. And what was it he’d said later, when we were all searching for Mary?
You
Austen
men
really
should
take
better
care
of
your
wives
…

With a sudden, blinding clarity it dawned on me: Warren Hastings was one of the two main investors in Henry’s bank—the one most likely to have caused the crash of the Austen business empire. What had prompted his decision to cut and run? I had always suspected Jane’s portrayal of Henry in
Mansfield
Park
had played a part. But such an act would require more evidence than a work of fiction. Could that evidence have been provided by Mary?

A ripple of laughter came up from the parlor, as if they had heard my thoughts and dismissed them as too foolish to contemplate. Why would Mary want to ruin Henry? Why would she do such a thing to the man she was in love with?

To
bring
him
to
his
knees.

“Yes,” I whispered into the pillow, “I can believe
that
.” I thought of Henry, riding back to Chawton with nothing but the clothes on his back, the church the only option left to him. And Mary waiting in the wings, already slipping poison down her husband’s throat. What a tempting prospect the living of Steventon would have been to a man in Henry’s situation. And how easy for Mary to play the part of the poor widow-in-waiting as everyone watched James fading away.

What went wrong, I wondered. Had Henry always planned to marry Eleanor Jackson but kept it a secret until the living was secured? Had he simply humored Mary to make sure she went quietly, knowing all along that he would never make her his wife? Or had he intended to marry her but discovered just in time her role in his downfall? Had someone warned him? And could that someone have been Jane?

Did
Mary
find
out? Is that why she killed you?
There was no answering whisper in my head from Jane. All I could hear was the gentle snoring of Cass through the wall.

Sleep came somehow that night. My eyes were not closed for long, though, for the birds woke me a little before five in the morning. Anna was still asleep, lying on her back with her nightcap all askew, as if she had been pulling at it in her dreams. I didn’t want to disturb her or anyone else in the house by going downstairs at such an early hour. On the night table was the poem of Jane’s that I had copied out the previous afternoon. Comforted by the thought of having something of hers close to me, I reached for it and read it through:

When Winchester Races—a poem
for St. Swithin’s Day

When Winchester races first took their beginning

It is said the good people forgot their old Saint

Not applying at all for the leave of Saint Swithin

And that William of Wykeham’s approval was faint.

The races however were fixed and determined

The company came and the weather was charming

The Lords and the Ladies were satine’d and ermined

And nobody saw
any
future alarming.

But when the old Saint was informed of those doings

He made but one spring from his Shrine to the Roof

Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in
ruins

And then he addressed them all standing aloof.

Oh! Subjects rebellious! Oh Venta depraved

When once we are buried you think we
are
gone

But behold
me
immortal! By vice you’re enslaved

You have sinned and must suffer, then farther he said

These races and revels and dissolute measures

With which you’re debasing a neighboring Plain

Let them stand—You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures

Set off for your course, I’ll pursue with
my
rain.

Ye cannot but know my command o’er July

Henceforward I’ll triumph in shewing my powers

Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry

The curse upon Venta is July in
showers
.

The strangeness of it struck me anew: not only the subject, but the fact that there was a rhyme that didn’t work in the fourth verse—surely the word should have been “dead” not “gone”? And then there was the choice of words to be underlined: in some cases it was appropriate, but in others, not at all. Why, for instance, had she chosen to emphasize the word
ruins
in the third verse?

I sat staring at it for a while, then, on impulse, I reached for a pencil and paper. I jotted down all the underlined words, which were:

ANY; RUINS; ARE; ME; MY; SHOWERS.

Well, they don’t make any sense, however you arrange them, I thought. I started playing about with the letters, dividing the vowels from the consonants as I would for a game of anagrams. The first word that popped out was
Mary
. Then I spotted
Henry
. My heart began to beat a little faster. With the remaining letters, I was able to make three other words. Rearranged, they made a sentence:

HENRY OUR NEMESIS WAS MARY

I whispered what I had written, my mouth so dry my tongue caught on my teeth. Had Jane
known
what Mary was doing to her? Impossible, surely? She would have made some attempt to save herself by telling Cass, not by sending some coded message to her brother. What was it Cass had said? The poem was dictated
two
days
before she died: could it be that Mary had made some sort of confession, thinking Jane was too far gone to do anything about it?

I could just imagine the twisted satisfaction she might take in telling Jane what she had done to Henry and what she was about to do to her. If Jane knew she was beyond help at that stage the only thing to be gained by telling Cass was to make sure Mary hanged for it. Was Jane afraid of not being believed? Did she think her accusation would be put down to the effects of the laudanum she was taking?

If that was the case, I thought, any warning she wanted to give Henry would be dismissed in the same vein. Was the poem her only hope of getting the message to him? I stared at the words again. Then I heard a noise downstairs. The door of Cass’s bedroom opened and closed. I waited a couple of minutes before slipping out of bed and pulling on my shawl.

Cass was in the kitchen. She was standing at the doorway with her back to me, waving at someone outside. I caught a brief glimpse of a man on horseback, the profile instantly recognizable.

“Henry is abroad early,” I said as she turned around.

“That wasn’t Henry,” she laughed. “It was James-Edward. He’s going to Winchester to hire a carriage for Mary and Caroline.” She set the kettle on the range and took cups from the shelf above. “He
is
the very image of his uncle. I can understand why you mistook him.”

I wondered fleetingly if Cass’s mind had ever followed the pathways mine had. But no, Cass was the sort of creature who sought the light in people, not the darkness. If she sensed shadows, I thought, she would turn her back on them. “Will they be coming to the wedding breakfast?” I asked.

“It’s not possible,” she replied. “They have the offer of a holiday in Lyme and must leave Winchester by noon.”

“Martha must be disappointed.”

“Yes, a little. But they’ll join her in Portsmouth at the end of the week. Frank will have gone back to his ship by then.”

I watched her unlock the cupboard where the tea was kept. She placed the caddy on the dresser, next to the teapot then glanced over her shoulder at the kettle. Taking a deep breath I said: “Anna told me that Mary and Henry have fallen out; I suppose that will make things quite difficult at the wedding.”

Cass clicked her tongue. “Anna does tend to overdramatize things. Did you know she writes? She has a children’s story ready to be published.”

“I didn’t know,” I replied. “But I’m not surprised. I think that of all the nephews and nieces, Anna’s character is closest to Jane’s.” I paused for a moment. “Jane didn’t like Mary very much, did she?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just the impression Anna gives,” I said, my color rising as I twisted the truth. “She said Jane would have sided with Henry, as she did.”

“Well, they weren’t the best of friends, that’s true”—she nodded—“but Mary was very good to her at the end. I think Jane saw a very different side to her in those last few weeks.”

More
than
you
know
, I thought. “Was she there the whole time you and Jane were at Winchester?”

“Bar a few days in June when we thought Jane was getting better.” The kettle started to whistle, and she went to fetch it. “She would sit up all night with her sometimes so I could get some rest; she really was an angel.”

“I was reading the poem again this morning,” I said, “the one Jane dictated to you. It’s amazing to think she constructed all those verses in her head when she was so ill.”

“It
is
amazing, isn’t it? I think it helped to distract her from…” Her voice died as she poured scalding water onto the tea leaves.

I nodded. “I was curious about the words that were underlined: did she instruct you on that too?”

“Oh, yes—she might have been ill, but she was most particular. I just followed her instructions without paying much attention to the sense of it. Afterward, I did think it a little odd. I expect it was the laudanum—it must have fuddled her brain a little.”

“She must have wanted people to see the poem,” I said. “Was it a sort of parting gift, do you think?”

“She did say she wanted the family to see it. They all did, of course, when they came for the funeral. But then I put it away. It hurt me to be reminded of those last days, I suppose. It was James-Edward who made me get it out—he’s talking about collecting our memories of Jane for a book.”

I didn’t tell her, of course, that I had already begun writing mine. I was thinking about Henry, wondering if he could have paid any real attention to the poem at a time when he was caught up with organizing Jane’s funeral. The message had probably never reached its intended target. The warning had gone unheeded, but Henry had spurned Mary anyway. And she had gotten away with murder.