Jane and the Canterbury Tale (25 page)

I thought of George Moore’s rigid looks during our carriage ride home, and shivered. He was a cold-hearted fellow, indeed; but cold enough to shoot a man who had returned to Canterbury, despite the fortune paid out to keep him in the Indies? Nothing could be easier than that Moore should slip out of his bedchamber at Godmersham in the dead of night, and meet with Fiske on the old Pilgrim’s path beyond the Stour. Perhaps he had already known that Fiske would be present—without recourse to notes or tamarind seeds.

“And have the Indiamen brought any letters in recent months,” I enquired, “or has there lately been a period of drought?”

“I had hoped the business was entirely at an end, indeed,” Harriot confided, “for there had been nothing for the longest while. But then my hopes were dashed, at no less than
two
letters arriving on the same day, but a few weeks since! Mr. Moore was much preoccupied by them, and shut himself up in his book room, so that I was seized with anxiety that the charitable work had gone awry—but then he emerged, and would say only that we must certainly go to Godmersham for a fortnight’s visit, and dance at Chilham Castle. So the intelligence received cannot have been so
very
dreadful, after all, do not you think, dear Jane?”

It seemed fantastic—it
must
be so.

As fantastic as the idea of George Moore deliberately stealing his old friend James Wildman’s gun—and leaving it to be discovered in St. Lawrence churchyard.

I glanced from the temple in the distant direction of Bentigh, and the side-path where the corpse had been discovered—and was so surprized as to discover two figures on horseback, cantering spiritedly along the Stour. One was certainly Fanny, in her becoming new riding habit of military cut—and the other, a whipcord figure in black and dove grey, with a high-crowned beaver on his dark locks. Julian Thane. He had succeeded in luring Fanny out-of-doors on a
Sunday
, in defiance of the funereal calm that obtained within Godmersham; and from her animated looks, his success was complete. I recollected the letter on the silver salver, and was frankly glad I had not elected to pry. Fanny deserves more adventure than she has opportunity of obtaining.

“Jane,” Harriot repeated. “Are you tired?”

I turned resolutely away from the dashing pair by the riverbank. Harriot, thankfully, had not observed them. I should not like to consider of Mr. Moore’s strictures that evening on the subject of
Sunday riding
. “Only a little chilled, my dear. I am wanting a good fire and my comfortable chair in the library. Shall we turn back?”

Tho’ I said nothing to Harriot, I felt I must speak soon with Edward. He knew these people—this collection of genteel, comfortable, and secretive whist players—far better than I, and should more readily divine what lay hidden in their hearts. Without his privileged knowledge I merely groped through darkened halls. When the stakes were murder and the consequences death, one took care how one trod.

B
UT ALL THOUGHTS OF GAMESTERS AND THEIR CHARITABLE
missions were momentarily fled upon my return home. Edward had returned from Chilham, and brought a letter for me—from Adelaide MacCallister.

Chilham Castle
,
24 October 1813

I studied this missive thoughtfully, perusing it several times, and was so abstracted as to remain unresponsive when my brother taxed me for an account of its contents.

“I beg your pardon,” I said at length, when Edward had thrice pronounced my name. “Pray cast your eye over this note I have just received from Chilham.”

He took the single sheet of hot-pressed paper, and had only to glance at the hand before his eyes narrowed.

“Jane,” he said softly.

I glanced around the Great Hall; we were surrounded by little groups of Godmersham’s intimates, all conversing before parting at the stairs to dress for dinner.

“Do not speak until we may be private,” I murmured.

For I had seen what Edward had seen. The sloping, copperplate script of my letter was indistinguishable from that on the blood-stained scrap of paper discovered in Curzon Fiske’s breast pocket.

Adelaide MacCallister, it seemed, had set the fatal hour of meeting on the Pilgrim’s Way.

  
CHAPTER NINETEEN
  

24 O
CTOBER
1813,
CONT
.

“I
HAVE BEEN A FOOL,
” E
DWARD SAID, AS HE CLOSED THE
door of his book room firmly on the world and took up his preferred position near the fire. “I procured a sample of every fellow’s handwriting at Chilham Castle during our visit Friday—from the venerable Wildman and his son, to the gallant Captain and his batman—not excepting Julian Thane or the butler Twitch—and found my match nowhere. But I did not undertake to seize a piece of women’s notepaper, with so much as an inventory of linen scrawled upon it—and here Mrs. MacCallister delivers herself into my hands!”

“Is a mere letter so damning?” I faltered. “And is the similarity in the script so conclusive?”

“You have the evidence of your own eyes, Jane! Would you deny that the fist is exact in every respect to that of the note discovered upon the body?”

“I cannot.”

“And, too, there is the fact of the tamarind seed. It was Adelaide MacCallister who received the pouch full of them on her wedding night.”

“—received it of an unknown sailor purporting to be a baronet,
not
Curzon Fiske!”

“I should dearly love to learn the connexion between those two men, for there undoubtedly is one—but Myrrh will reveal nothing until his solicitor is come.” My brother began to pace before the hearth, his countenance suffused with varying emotions—anger, frustration, despair. “Do you believe it so impossible that a lady, but a few hours newly-married, should resort to violence against the shameful evidence of bigamy?”

“No, but—”

“Why defend Adelaide MacCallister, Jane, when you know her for an Adventuress of old? She possesses the sort of high courage and daring—not to mention an utter lack of principle, if her past way of life is to be credited—that should stop at nothing!”

“Indeed, you are too severe upon her, Edward,” I protested. “You leap from conjecture and common gossip to an indictment of the lady’s character, when in fact you know little of her life, or the sufferings she may have endured at Fiske’s hands. She was the merest child when she married him, and by all accounts was forced to survive by her wits. It does not absolutely follow that she is become a murderess as well.”

“I fear in this instance your tender heart betrays you,” my brother retorted. “It is always the way of a woman to take another woman’s part, and to believe the gentler sex incapable of the most ruthless acts—”

I opened my mouth to object, for I had known a number of murderous females in the course of my life, but Edward forestalled me.

“The return of Curzon Fiske placed in jeopardy every triumph Adelaide had strived to achieve—renewed respectability, an upright husband who cherished her, and the right to move in the highest circles through that husband’s attachment to Wellington’s staff. Consider what she should lose, Jane, if Fiske claimed his marital precedence!”

“She had every reason to abhor Fiske’s return—but you cannot prove, Edward, that she put a bullet through the man’s heart!”

“I need not prove it,” he said steadily. “I need merely to place the strongest possible motive—and means—and opportunity before the Assizes, Jane, and allow Justice to run its course. To do otherwise, as First Magistrate, should be a sad dereliction of my duty.”

“Edward!”

“I am in possession of unequivocal evidence.” He fluttered Adelaide’s letter before my eyes, every fibre of his being taut with anger. “Mrs. MacCallister set the fateful hour of Fiske’s death—her own hand bears witness to it. He should not have been waiting longer on the Pilgrim’s Way, once the Captain and young Thane had paid him off, unless he expected a fairer visitation that night.”

There was little I could say in reply. Julian Thane’s own words must rise in memory; for when I had told him of the silken pouch, he apprehended immediately that it had come to his sister on her wedding night as a summons from the Dead.
Fiske sends you his calling card
, he had exclaimed as he whirled upon Adelaide—and she had dismissed the pouch as irrelevant.

In this, she had certainly uttered a falsehood. The tamarind seeds had spoken one name aloud in her heart—and her hand alone must have twisted a seed in the note she had written to Fiske, establishing the time and place of meeting. Indeed, she had wilfully prevaricated from the moment of the corpse’s discovery, and allowed others to bear the brunt of
suspicion. And there remained the troubling fact of young James Wildman’s pistol, discarded so innocently among the tombstones of St. Lawrence churchyard for Mr. Sherer to find.…

I met Edward’s gaze. “If what you believe is true, Mrs. MacCallister has exposed every gentleman of her acquaintance to the gravest suspicions of murder, rather than admit to communication with her dead husband. If she is innocent of murder, however many assignations she may have kept, fear for her own safety might prompt such behaviour.”