Jane and the Man of the Cloth (36 page)

“No, Father. The words come only with difficulty this evening.”

“Then I trust you are off to bed.”

“I believe I
shall
retire, if you have no objection.”

My father gave a look to my mother's comfortable countenance, which bore the ghost of a smile as she laboured over the stitching of a child's undergarment (which should go, no doubt, to St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary, of which she had become a temporary member), and nodded. “I trust that tonight, at least, you shall endeavour to
sleep,”
he said, with a slight warning in his tone; and I knew that he thought of my nocturnal ramblings along the Charmouth road, and the mortal danger they had invited.

“But of course,” I replied, with as much innocence as I could muster; and made my way back through the scullery.

It was as I gained the hall, however, and would turn towards the stairs, that I encountered our valuable James. He was engaged in trimming a lanthorn set into an alcove in the entryway. It
would
smoke, despite our best efforts, and we had all but despaired of its utility, and determined to abandon it for another, of more recent vintage; but I observed to my delight that James had succeeded where less able hands had failed. He is genuinely a master of all things domestic. At my appearance, he stood to his full height, and turned to me with an expression of deference. Such an opportunity for confidence—and beyond the ears of my mother—should only rarely offer; and so of a sudden I seized it.

“James,” I said, in a barely-audible whisper and with an eye for the barricaded sitting-room door. “I would speak with you in private.”

He looked over his shoulder, as though my parents’ eyes might bore through even the oak secretary, and nodded conspiratorially. I turned back into the scullery—but it remained the province of Cook and Jenny, who were setting the bones from dinner to boil—and felt myself in a quandary. Did I exit the front door, my father should hear, and believe me gone on some mysterious errand; I should not put it past him to follow, and leave my mother in some confusion as to his purpose.

“The back garden, miss?” came a whisper from James; and indeed, it should be the very thing. I slipped past him, and mounted the stairs, while he followed along behind—as was entirely proper, for he served to valet my father in the evenings, and was generally engaged at this hour in setting out his nightclothes, and arranging his toiletries upon the wash stand.

Wings cottage has a peculiar charm, in being built into the rising ground at its back, so that the first storey might almost be another ground floor. With a door just off the first-floor hallway, the back garden is suitable for ladies’ use, being accessible to the bedchamber and dressing-room; and indeed, my mother and Cassandra had sat here in the sun of a morning or two, while Cassandra was recovering, and enjoyed the gende breezes, and the last of the summer's flowers, nodding from the bank. I had not had time to give the garden much thought; but I was pleased to find that two wooden chairs remained upright in the grass, despite the storms of the past week, and that today's sun and wind had entirely dried them. I took one with alacrity, and gazed up at the heavens; the first stars had begun to make their appearance, though the sky as yet held light We Austens are determinedly unfashionable, and
xmU
dine early; and so the sun had barely set, though we were some hours already pushed back from the table.

“How may I be of service, miss?” James enquired, with an uneasy glance over his shoulder for ears beyond the doorway. He had remained standing, and could not but feel the awkwardness of the arrangement; for indeed, there was the faintest whisper of an assignation about our presence together in the garden. I should not like him to seem less than at ease, and so paid him the respect due to his situation.

“I shall not keep you long,” I began, in a lowered tone. “Are you perchance acquainted, James, with a fellow by the name of Matthew Hurley?”

“What—Matty the Nob?” he rejoined, with a broad smile. “We all knows Matty. There's nothin’ he can't fix nor find, for a price—and it's allus too high. What you want wit’ Matty, miss? Leastways—” he amended consciously—“if I'm not bein’ impertnunt.”

“You will remember that I had an errand to Mrs. Tib-bit.” I leaned towards him, the better to inspire confidence. “About the clothes for the Tibbit children.”

“Right you are, miss.”

“It seems that Mrs. Tibbit believes her late husband is owed some monies by Matthew Hurley, for some job of work they recently performed together; and though the manner of her husband's death must throw suspicion upon
all
his former activities, not to mention confederates, I felt it my duty as a Christian to pursue the matter on her behalf.”

“Bill owed some money?” James snorted in disbelief; “I reckon ‘tis the other way ‘round. But I guess you're wantin’ the way to Matt Hurley, is that it?”

“In truth, James,”? said, with a pitiful expression of dependence, “I had understood that the fellow keeps such low company, that it should be a penance for any lady to seek him out. I had rather hoped that
you
might enquire of Mr. Hurley as to the particulars of his dealings with Mr. Tibbit. He might prove more forthright to a man of his acquaintance, and a native of his town known to him some years, than he should to a lady and a stranger.”

James shrugged. “If ‘tis important to you, miss, I'm happy to oblige. But I can't see rightly why you pay such mind to Maggie Tibbit. The truth's as scarce as teeth in
her
mouth, beggin” your pardon, miss; and from the manner of his death, I reckon Bill Tibbit got what he was owed.”

“I gave the woman my solemn vow, for she was much disturbed in the matter—and indeed, she has many mouths to feed, and might feel the want of coin severely.” I hesitated, wondering how openly I might direct the course of James's enquiries. “I gathered that the labour was a matter of digging, performed for the late Captain Fielding—and that Maggie Tibbit might have gone to the Captain himself, but for his sudden death.”

James did not respond for a moment, and his eyes narrowed shrewdly. “They've been a number of sudden deaths, to my thinking,” he finally said thoughtfully, “and none of ‘em too well explained, for that matter. I'll see what Matty Hurley has to say for himsel’. You just place your cares in James's keeping, miss, and think no more about it”

I thanked him, and pressed a few pence into his hand, which he blushingly accepted, though only after profuse entreaty; and I sent him on his way. As I watched him go, I gave thanks for the Jameses of this world, and their easy access to places a lady should take care not to visit. He is very likely to form his own construction of matters, but little likely to divine the truth of my purpose—suspicion being far from his nature, and detection beyond his power. I have observed that men will quite happily believe they are rendering a
service
to a lady, where they might baulk at being made a mere pawn; and yet it is the latter that is so often the case.

And with that thought, the face of Seraphine LeFevre rose unbidden before my eyes. The equivocations of this afternoon did not sit well upon my mind. I could not be easy in her character; I mistrusted her motives, and her purpose was unclear to me. Did she tend the wounded at the Grange tonight, as the stars shone from a darkening sky? Or had my suspicions unnerved her—and sent her out on the beach to a dark green boat, and a hard row against the tide, and a cutter waiting to sail for France— leaving Sidmouth alone in a stone-hearted gaol?

22 September 1804

∼

L
AST EVENING'S STARS PROVED AS LITTLE TO BE RELIED UPON, AS THE
conflicting reports of Sidmouth's character; for this morning dawned still and wet, with a thick fog rolled in off the harbour, and all the town's bustle and business at once magnified and muffled by the impenetrable cloud. I gazed at the lowering gloom with displeasure. If any hoofprints yet remained at the site of Captain Fielding's misadventure, they should be utterly marred by rain, and offer little in the way of suggestion as to the murderer's comparative size and strength.
Tliat
door was closed to me; but others might yet be opened.

It was decidedly
not
a day for paying a call; and so I was hard-pressed to explain the energy of my resolve to wait upon the Barnewalls this afternoon, at my mother's exclaiming over the poor nature of the day, and declaring it fit only for remaining indoors by a comfortable fire. Indeed, she began to talk so much of an early removal from Lyme, it being evident that the closer weather of autumn was hard upon us, and the fair golden days of late September fast in decline, that I seized upon her mood and avowed as I
must
pay the call, as we might determine to be off at any moment, and the Barnewalls sadly neglected. I was forced to exaggerate here the level of attention the lady had paid me, from the necessity of painting an object worthy of serious consideration; but eventually gained my point. A hack chaise was summoned; my father handed me in with a wink; and in less time than I should have imagined possible, I was on my way to the Barnewalls” residence. It was a slow trip, owing to the fog, and elicited many a grumble and curse from the coachman; but I benefited from the solitude and tedium of the occasion, in reviewing my purpose in paying such a call.

I knew from rumour, and something Mrs. Barnewall had dropt, that they had taken an excessively large establishment some few miles out of Lyme, near the village of Wootton Fitzpaine.
¹
This is a small habitation, tucked into a valley between two hills, with an ancient ruin on the one and a lovely growth of woods crowning the other. One or two well-kept farms, and a cruciform church, in some need of repair, form the major part of the village; and as I eyed the belfry of the latter, I could not but think that it should make an excellent signal tower, did someone have need of conversing with ships at sea. I had neither time nor inclination to explore its utility, however; the one truly fine house in Wootton Fitzpaine was my object, and I could spare only a thought for the scattered settlement it overlooked.

Wootton House proved to be an excellent modern estate, its limestone construction dating not earlier than the middle of the last century, and well-fitted-out by its own-ers, who were absent in London, and who had leased the place to the Barnewalls through their Dorset agents—or so Mrs. Barnewall informed me, within a few minutes of my arrival at her door, having seen me divested of my pelisse and hat, and begun the necessary civility of showing me around the house. If my call occasioned any surprise, she was equal to it; and ascribed my attention to the weather, which should render even the most resourceful unutterably stupid, did they remain within doors too long. Or so she said; though I observed a book laid down at my entrance, and a comfortable lap rug thrown aside, and knew that I had discomfited my hostess a little.

She was dressed today in a remarkably decent gown of French blue wool, with a full bodice and sleeves, and very little ornamentation; I was surprised to observe that the cut followed the lines of no ancient civilisation, as her gowns so often did; it had virtually the effect of a cowl, and rendered her slanting eyes, and pale face, and dark springy locks, the more interesting for its severity. And so I assumed her to be effecting the mood of the cloister, so suited to the general atmosphere out of doors; and decided that this was as much a sort of trumpery as her Roman or Egyptian garb.

We began with a parade through the principal rooms, all very fine, and done in excellent taste, with silk draperies and mahogany furniture—so curiously formal for Lyme, that I adjudged the present owners to be little in residence there, and to have simply repeated their usual style of city living, in their country place. As we walked, Mrs. Barnewall informed me that she had been a full six months in command of the house, and that though they intended a removal to Ireland in but a few weeks, her husband had determined to renew the lease the following spring, and spend the better part of the summer season in Dorset.

“I am excessively disappointed,” she declared, “for I had
longed
for a London season, or perhaps a trip to the Alps—though the renewal of hostilities between England and France might make such a journey difficult. I could have been happy with Easter in Bath, and spent May and June in London, with a daily parade along Rotten Row, and devoted my industry to the direction of a legion of dressmakers—and retired to someone's shooting lodge for August and September. But it is not to be. Mr. Barnewall is not to be gainsaid. To Dorset we shall return. I hope that we may find you here as well, Miss Austen— for I
depend
upon good society, in such retirement. You think of returning, I hope?”

“I cannot undertake to say,” I replied, “my time is at my parents’ disposal, I fear, and I go and come as they choose to send me. But I wonder, Mrs. Barnewall, at your engaging a residence so long, in a town and amidst a society for which you show so little affection. What can it be, that so fixes your husband's interest here?”