Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (40 page)

“Miss Austen?” said a voice at my shoulder.

I turned to see the stooped shoulders and balding head of the innkeeper. “Good evening, Mr. …” What had Frank said was the man's name? “Mr. Fortescue. I am sorry to appear at such an advanced hour, but I have only just learned that Mrs. Seagrave intends to quit Southampton on the morrow. I could not bear to let her go without a word.”

“Very good of you, and I'm sure,” said the fellow with a bob and a smile, “but Lady Temple ton charged me expressly to refuse all visitors tonight.”

“Lady Temple ton?” I repeated. It was as I had feared. There was hardly time enough between Friday and Sunday to complete a journey into Kent—and certainly no time at all to achieve the distance
twice.
The Baronet's coach had been sent not from Luxford, but from Portsmouth. Sir Walter had gone alone into Kent in a hired carriage, but Lady Templeton had remained behind. Awaiting news, perhaps, of Tom Seagrave's fate?

“Mrs. Seagrave's aunt,” Fortescue informed me kindly. “She intends to start for Kent quite early tomorrow, I understand, and does not wish to be disturbed. If you like, you might pen a note to Mrs. Seagrave and leave it for her—there is ink and paper in the morning-room, just off the passage.”

He gestured in the direction of the back staircase.

“You are very good, Mr. Fortescue,” I told him with a dazzling smile. “That is exactly what I shall do.”

I turned purposefully towards the morning-room, and was careful to linger in it until I was certain that the weary ladies on Mr. Fortescue's sopha had claimed the innkeeper's attention. The morning-room was quite empty. I examined the contents of a writing desk, then quickly made for the servants' stairs.

T
HE DOOR TO
L
OUISA'S UPSTAIRS PARLOUR WAS FIRMLY
closed, but a light shone through the jamb. I approached it stealthily, desperate to make no noise, and pressed my ear almost to the oak.

All was silent within. Not even the fall of embers in the grate disturbed the silence. The children's rooms must adjoin this one, as Louisa's bedchamber did—and yet I heard nothing: no shift of a bed frame, no faint whimper of unquiet sleep. It was as though the family were already fled into Kent, and for an instant—my worst suspicions assuaged—I was weak with relief.

I must have sighed, and the sound penetrated to the room beyond the door. There was an abrupt movement—as of a small metal article overturned upon a table—and then an imperious voice called out: “Who is there?”

I had heard that voice on only one occasion, but I could not fail to recognise its tone of command. There was something of the same harsh timbre—the reflexive coldness—in Louisa's voice, when she gave way to snobbery. Lady Templeton.

I drew a sharp breath, and said in my best imitation of Jenny, “It's only the upper housemaid, ma'am, with the hot water.”

“We have no need of you tonight. Mrs. Seagrave has already retired.”

“Will the lady be wishful of a fire in the morning?”

“If so, I am sure that she will ring. Now be off, you stupid girl, and leave us in peace.”

I made a great deal of noise in retreating down the hallway, and collected my wits and my nerves in the shadows of the staircase. Were I not careful, I should be discovered in loitering by an honest servant, and made to explain myself.
Steady, Jane,
I urged inwardly; and took care to draw off my pattens and half-boots as dexterously as possible.

Louisa's bedchamber lay between my position and the parlour in which Lady Templeton worked. Undoubtedly the door should be on the latch; but I had procured a letter knife from the morning-room below, and was prepared to use it. I crept noiselessly forward, the blade concealed within a fold of my skirt. It was essential to muffle the sound of metal working against metal.

There was the bedchamber door. I wrapped the letter knife in the hem of my gown, and attempted to slide it slowly between door and frame. Once the tip of the blade was inserted beneath the edge of the latch, I might ease the fastening upwards, and gain entry to the room. Pray God Mr. Fortescue attended to his hinges'

Mr. Fortescue, or someone he employed, did.

There was no squeal of reluctant iron, no betraying creak of timbers. The door opened as though a wraith desired passage; and I took this bit of luck as a favourable omen. I stepped into Louisa's bedchamber and did not trouble to secure the latch behind me. I could not hope for such good fortune again.

She should have stirred at the band of candlelight that fell across her drugget, and screamed aloud as she detected my presence: but she did not raise so much as a finger. This was no luck, I knew—this was the drugged sleep of laudanum. I cast one glance at the inert form in the middle of the four-poster, determined that she yet breathed, and moved on tiptoe to the bedchamber's far door. The parlour lay beyond. I would not require my letter knife here; the portal was already ajar.

With breath suspended, I hung in the shadows and stared at Lady Templeton's back. She was seated at the table before the fire, her hand steady and unhurried as it moved across a sheet of rag. She had, at last, all the time in the world for writing.

I understood how it should be: Louisa Seagrave, repentant of the plot she had urged against her innocent husband, would die of laudanum tonight in the bed behind me, a determined suicide. The letter Lady Templeton busily penned—was she so certain of her hand, that she could attempt to mimic Louisa's?— would admit to a wife's infamy—to the plot Chessyre had perpetrated against Tom Seagrave, aboard the
Manon.
Only that plot was not of Louisa's invention— but Lady Templeton's. She must have known of her brother's will some months before his death; perhaps it was
she
who had reported its curious provisions to the London press. The
Morning Gazette
should seize upon this suicide, and make the obvious construction: the heiress had determined to blot out her husband, and had repented too late.

One person alone should benefit if Louisa were to die. Litde Charles, of course, should inherit everything his grandfather had to leave—but with Lady Templeton as trustee. I doubted that even so sturdy a child as Charles could long survive the guardianship of such a woman.

Where, oh where, were Frank and Mr. Hill? How long before a fatal dose of laudanum must take its cruel effect?

I grasped the letter knife more firmly in my hand and eased through the door. Behind me, Louisa moaned.

Lady Templeton's back stiffened; her hand was arrested in its flight over the paper—and indeed, the sound of the woman dying in her bed was such as must make the flesh crawl. My lady, however, was a scion of the bluest blood, which is to say that she was the product of perhaps four or five centuries of harsh and ruthless breeding. She did not blench. Her forefathers had poisoned kings and princes; she had suckled at the breast of Lady Macbeth. She would have Luxford House and the late Viscount's millions, or hang in the attempt.

She laid down her pen, dusted the paper, and folded it in three. Then she rose—and at that moment there came a firm rap on the door.

“Mrs. Seagrave!” my brother cried. “Mrs. Seagrave! I must speak to my sister at once!”

Lady Templeton started, turned—and at the same moment, I leapt towards the table where the letter lay, and seized it in my hand.

“Good God!” she cried, her hand at her throat; and then she lunged at me.

I held out the letter knife in warning; she stopped short, her eyes fixed on my face.

“I know you,” she muttered. “Louisa's friend—the naval woman. You were in Lombard Street.”

“It is my brother at the door. Shall we open it?”

She snatched at the paper I held, but I stepped backwards, towards the outer passage. “Frank!” I cried. “The bedchamber!”

There was the sound of racing feet in the passage. Lady Templeton gave one wild look towards Louisa— glanced back at the letter—and hurled herself at my breast. I was thrust so hard against the closed door as to be nearly winded; the letter knife clattered to the floor.

“Give me that letter,” she gasped, as though she had only to cast it in the fire, and save herself. She was clawing at my hand when Frank achieved the room.

¹
Jane is not in error when she mentions Cassandra's letter. The post was delivered on Sundays regardless of the Sabbath.—
Editor's note.

²
The link-boy was an urchin paid to run before a sedan chair in its passage through the streets of a town, holding a torch or lantern aloft.—
Editor's note.

Chapter 27
A Bride-Ship to India

Monday,

~

“W
ELL
, C
APTAIN
A
USTEN,” SAID
M
R
. P
ERCIVAL
Petherihg as he prepared to quit our lodgings this morning, “I am deeply obliged. It is something to have a murder resolved to satisfaction—and before the Assizes, too.”

“Captain Seagrave, I trust, shall be released?” Frank's face was stern; he offered no quarter to the magistrate. Pethering, in his opinion, had made a mess of things; and Pethering should feel the Captain's displeasure as forcibly as any midshipman too clumsy with a quadrant.

“Captain Seagrave is at liberty even now,” the magistrate replied, “and keeping vigil over his wife. Poor lady— there was little enough to be done, I suppose, in such a case.”

“But what could be attempted, was attempted,” Frank reminded him abruptly.

Mr. Hill had followed hard upon Frank's heels at the Dolphin last night, and while Frank held the struggling Lady Templeton, and called out for cordage and watchmen, the surgeon examined Louisa Seagrave. She was lost in a swoon—impossible to rouse—and he judged, from the appearance of her pupils, quite close to death. The pulse was fluttering and weak, her skin clammy to the touch.

“We have not much time,” said Hill grimly. “You must support her, Miss Austen, and walk her about the room, to stimulate the bodily humours.” And with that he went immediately to his rooms in St. Michael's Square, in search of ipecac and tartar emetic.

The maidservant, Nancy, was roused from sleep, and pressed into service in supporting her mistress; we attempted to force some coffee through Louisa's blue lips; we walked, and chafed her wrists, and waved burnt feathers under her nose—but to no avail. Rather than emerge from her swoon, she seemed determined to slide further into unconsciousness.

By the time Mr. Hill returned with his remedies a quarter-hour later, Louisa Seagrave was no more. And Lady Templeton stood accused of a second murder.

It was plain, once the letter her ladyship had written was read and understood, that she meant to implicate Tom Seagrave in the Chessyre plot. The confession ascribed to Louisa's pen—the confession Lady Templeton had sought to wrench from my hand, and cast into the fire once she knew herself discovered—named the Captain as the man responsible for garroting the Lieutenant. Lady Templeton had allowed for no possible reprieve, in her brutal scheme: she intended to see Tom Seagrave hang, and with him, all possibility of her discovery.

“It should be nothing, I suppose, for such a woman to learn Chessyre's name and direction,” my brother had said, as we perused die false confession by candlelight last evening. “Lady Templeton already possessed a good deal of influence; she should soon be the mistress of a considerable fortune; and she had only to promise Chessyre the world, to gain the sacrifice of his honour.”

“And everything else merely followed. Louisa, we may assume, would have told her of your express, and the events the Frenchman witnessed; Lady Templeton might have learned of them as early as Wednesday, when she appeared in Portsmouth. And so she determined to be rid of both men.”

“It is a puzzle,” my brother said pensively, “for you know Tom was told in Portsmouth that Louisa went out in Lady Templeton's carriage that Wednesday night. Do you think, Jane, that Lady Templeton carried her into Southampton, and made her speak to Chessyre?”

“—That she served as lure, you mean, for her aunt's murderous purpose?”

I had glanced down at Louisa Seagrave's body as I said this, and the sight must quell my tongue. Whatever Lady Templeton and Louisa had done between them was finished now. “I do not think, Frank, that we should ask that question.”

M
R
. P
ETHERING BOWED; MY BROTHER NODDED SLIGHTLY
in return; and the magistrate was shown the door. I collapsed into a chair and stared at my brother.

“I believe, my dear, that we should fortify ourselves with a glass of wine.”

“But it is barely ten o'clock in the morning, Jane!”

“And the sun is not yet over the yardarm.” I smiled up at him. “Consider, Frank, that if you were in the Indies now—or rounding the Horn …”

“I should be already deep into a bottle. Ring for Jenny, my dear—we shall send round to the Dolphin for a bottle of Madeira, and drink to Seagrave's innocence. It is all the man has left to him, poor fellow.”