The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (11 page)

“Oh goodness, no. Am I going to have to get one?”

“I believe that is part of the appropriate dress,” said Mrs. Hurst. “But perhaps not for a physician.”

“You could bring that scalpel of yours,” Caroline said, and Charles laughed in his seat next to her.

“Get a big enough scabbard for it, you should be fine,” slurred Mr. Hurst.

Dr. Maddox smiled and kept his nervousness to himself.

Bingley's business was brief, and he quickly returned to Derbyshire before the mystery could be solved. Caroline was exceedingly happy at the prospect of a royal ball, and Bingley was exceedingly happy to see his sister content. However the doctor was managing that, it was working.

Geoffrey and Georgie were there to greet him at the door, their skin coloration beginning to fade. During the day, when they were allowed to play about, not yet being of the age to have proper lessons (though Darcy had begun his son on reading and writing, but not particularly harshly), they were free to run about and could hardly be separated.

As the servants removed Bingley's coat, he inquired after his wife and asked that his other children be brought to him in his study. Before long, Jane appeared, carrying little Charles, and passed him off to his father as she kissed her son. Nurse arrived, carrying Eliza, but Jane waited until Bingley was settled with his son in his lap before passing a letter to him. “From Darcy.” It was only then that she took Eliza into her arms.

He broke open the seal and quickly scanned Darcy's elegant but precise script. He told Nurse to wait outside. When they were alone and the door soundly shut, he read it aloud.

To Charles Bingley,

Please be assured first that all is well and we are now on our way south. We have a stop of business to make in the east, but it is not terribly off course.

I have a request of you that may seem of an odd nature, and I would wish that, if you want to tell anyone of it, please restrict this conversation to your wife.

In the back right corner of my study is a small cabinet made of red oak. All of its three drawers are locked, as they contain financial records dating to my father's lifetime and possibly before. It has been years since I have been through any of them. You will find that the master key of Pemberley opens the first two drawers, but not the third. I made an attempt at opening it some years ago, but either the lock was rusted out, or I did not have the appropriate key. I could do nothing to open the drawer without destroying the cabinet, and I had no major interest in the cabinet beyond mere curiosity, so it has never been opened in my time as master of Pemberley.

Please take the keys and make some attempt to open that drawer, employing whatever methods may be necessary. In fact, I give you full permission to destroy the cabinet, but I imagine that, with your skills, it will not come to that. Please keep this task quiet, and if anyone asks, have Mrs. Reynolds called in. Inform her that I have given you the authority to do this, and that it directly relates to a matter I believe she is better informed of than I am.

If there are any documents in the drawer, please do me the additional favor of reading through them. In particular, I am looking for someone by the name of Bellamont, whether he or she was under my father's employ, and when. If you discover anything, please report it to me.

I will explain the matter in full detail when I return. I regret that the explanation is too complicated to give justice to now, as the road is very exhausting.

Many thanks,

Darcy

“What does he mean about the keys?”

“He gave me a set of the master keys of Pemberley before leaving,” Bingley explained, and quickly produced his own keys, which he used to unlock the bottom drawer of his desk. “Here.” He put a set of keys on the desk for display. “Oh, and these.” He reached into the drawer, sifted through the various Indian books there, and retrieved a set of lock picks. “I never should have told him that story. Now I'm going to feel like a common burglar.”

“Better than destroying the cabinet, I suppose. Do you think you can do it?”

“I've no idea. But if he's off saving your sister's reputation, I might as well aid him in some fashion. Are you accompanying me?”

“Let me put our children down for a nap, and then, yes.”

An hour later they were at Pemberley and greeted by a surprised skeleton crew, which included Darcy's manservant, who was waved off. They quickly made their way to the study. The cabinet in question was not hard to locate. It was in the back,
obviously not in regular use, and the only one with precisely three drawers. “If anyone inquires as to what we are doing,” Bingley told the servant attending them, “please send in Mrs. Reynolds. Otherwise, Mr. Darcy's specifications were that we be left alone.”

The servant bowed and left, closing the great doors behind him.

“First,” Bingley said. He went through the ring of keys from Pemberley, but while one opened the first two drawers, Darcy was right that it did not open the bottom one. “It doesn't even fit. The lock was changed at some point.”

“Surely a locksmith can handle it.”

“Not without making a fuss. I think, knowing Darcy, he wishes to avoid that at all costs.” When his wife did not contradict him, he sat down on the floor and placed the lower pick into the lock, inserting the other one just above it and fiddling with it. “Rusted. But not impossible, I think.”

“You are quite the rogue.”

“I haven't opened it yet,” he pointed out. “Argh! What a difficult lock. You may wish to sit down… this may take a while.”

“Charles! I'm not
currently
with child.”

“That we know of.”

She gave him a smirk before having to greet Mrs. Reynolds, who entered very authoritatively with a grand opening of the door and silently awaited the explanation of why someone, even Darcy's in-laws, was messing around in her master's study.

“Mrs. Reynolds,” Jane said, “Mr. Darcy has written and asked Charles to retrieve some records from a particular cabinet for him. He said it pertained to a matter that you have some knowledge of, but he did not specify what that was.”

Mrs. Reynolds went through several changes of expression, but she nodded obediently and said nothing. She moved around the desk and looked at the rather hapless-looking figure of Charles Bingley on the floor working at the lock.

“I think that was the first pin… or me breaking it. Either one.”

“Mrs. Reynolds,” Jane said very calmly. “Do you have any idea as to the contents of this cabinet?”

“Oh no, Mrs. Bingley. I imagine if he keeps it locked, it's financial records, and I remember Mr. Darcy—Mr. Darcy's father—using it occasionally, but I came to Pemberley some years after the master's birth, and it has never been my concern.”

“Well, this should solve it,” Bingley said. “Yes, first pin, definitely. All right, first pin is the hardest. Or is it the last pin? I forget.”

Whether he remembered or not, he took some time in opening the lock. Mrs. Reynolds called for tea but brought it in herself and otherwise kept the door shut. She did, however, stay in the room and was not dismissed.

“There!” Bingley said triumphantly, as the sound of the lock very soundly turning open finally broke the silence in the room. He wiped the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief from Mrs. Reynolds and pulled the drawer open. Its hinges had rusted, so this took some work, but finally the cabinet revealed its treasure—pages and pages of documents. “Well, after all that, I was hoping for gold or something.”

“You did a good job anyway,” Jane said, and kissed her husband as he rose and pulled the records from the drawer, putting the huge stack on the desk. “Oh dear.”

“May I help you, sir?” Mrs. Reynolds said. “If you're looking for something specific—”

“Yes. A Mr. Bellamont, or records of his employment at Pemberley, if they exist.”

Mrs. Reynolds visibly paled, and the Bingleys stopped opening various folders to stare at her with the obvious intention of waiting for her to explain her reaction.

“Do save us the trouble,” Bingley said.

“Well.” For once, the elderly Mrs. Reynolds, usually sharp as a pin, began to look her age. “I did know her—and it is a Mrs. Bellamont. Or, properly,
Miss
Bellamont. The master seems to have forgotten, perhaps because of his age at the time, but she was his mother's lady-maid.”

“What else do you remember of her? I think Darcy will require more specifics.”

“Only that she was dismissed rather hastily, shortly before Mrs. Darcy's death. At the time, I was not the manager of the house, only the laundress, and so I don't remember—”

“It's fine,” Bingley said. “The date of Mrs. Darcy's death?”

Mrs. Reynolds supplied it. Mrs. Darcy had died twenty years earlier, days after Georgiana's birth, when a fever had overtaken her. The whole house had been devastated, especially, of course, the young Darcy, then thirteen.

That made going through the records much easier, as they were dated very accurately and in the traditional neat script of the Master of Pemberley. Annual salary sheets were signed and dated by Mr. Geoffrey Darcy and, in the earlier years, by his steward, Mr. Wickham. Before tremendously long, with the three of them working, they located the document specifying a termination payment for Miss Alice Bellamont. Oddly, Bingley noted that the termination came during Mrs. Darcy's confinement, a few months before her death.

“An odd time to dismiss a lady-maid,” he said, and no one found a proper response.

The Bingleys got into bed later than usual, as they had every night since Geoffrey Darcy had stayed at Chatton without his parents around. One look from his father was still enough to scare him into listening to Nurse, but his Uncle Bingley was not his father and had trouble making such a severe face as was appropriate. Jane had to put three small children to bed and thus was similarly exhausted when she climbed next to her husband, and they lay there for some time with the candles still lit.

“I suppose we should give more responsibilities to Nurse.”

“I suppose.”

“A good gentleman does not take such interest in his children until they are properly grown,” Jane said.

Charles turned on his side to face her. “And who told you this? Your father?”

“Hardly! My mother.”

“Of course. I should have assumed. Well, then I am not a proper gentleman. I am sorry to disappoint you, a gentleman's daughter, who deserves only the best. Surely you are disappointed in me.”

“Most disappointed, Charles,” she said, and kissed him. “I suppose it would be horrible of us to speculate about exactly what we did today.”

“Yes.”

“And to assume only the best.”

“Yes. But we are both thinking the same thing, correct?”

“I am not a mentalist, Charles, so I do not know what you are thinking. In fact, the matter is entirely puzzling to me.”

“Well,” Bingley said. “Then it is my husbandly duty to enlighten you as to what I am thinking, which most unfortunately, is a bit gossipy. But duty is more important than gossip.” He held her hand as they talked. “I do not think Mrs. Reynolds was entirely forthcoming with us today.”

“That I did realize.”

“It was more what she left out. Now, Miss Bellamont, whoever she was, occupied a treasured position for many years and, for her to do so, we will assume that Mrs. Darcy had some attachment to her. It is quite unlucky to upset the normality of the household during confinement. So Miss Bellamont must have done something to make Mrs. Darcy quite upset—or Mr. Darcy suitably upset to dismiss her despite his wife's protests. Now, the first thing I can think of for a servant is theft, but Mrs. Reynolds would have known about that and would have had no shame in saying it. News of a dismissal would have gone around all the servants, no doubt. But Mrs. Reynolds omitted the reason, which she surely must have known. So—I will assume the latter of the two offenses I can imagine.”

Jane looked curious. “Pray?”

“She was with child.”

“Not so horrible. I know the Darcys are a particularly upstanding and proper household—very proper—”

“—Very,
very
proper,” Bingley said as they giggled.