Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (16 page)

“You have put the fat into the fire, and no mistake, Miss Jane,” was all William Chute would say as he helped himself to stewed pig’s feet and—joy beyond imagining for Mrs. Austen!—cold brawn. “I should have liked to have avoided an inquest, with the Treaty gone missing, but Bolton feels it would not do. One must consider the wire you found. To call Gage’s death Misadventure is hardly honest, whatever concerns of State might argue; and so Bolton believes we must empanel a jury, and present the evidence.”

“When is it to be, sir?”

“In two days’ time,” he replied. “But stay a little, and I shall explain.”

It was evident from the disposition of our party about the Saloon that his lordship’s visit, and the close conversation in the book room, were of general interest. All but Benedict L’Anglois and Miss Gambier were present; and presumably her formidable aunt would relate the particulars to her. We sat in groups of twos and threes. I settled by Cassandra, and we were soon joined by Thomas-Vere, who seemed to regard us as in some wise his property while at The Vyne. All of us had plates laden with good things: cheese biscuits and stewed plums; slices of ham and radishes; cold tongue and suet pudding. William Chute appeared in our corner with a decanter of Madeira. I thanked him, my face upturned to his, and felt a sudden prickle of consciousness along the back of my neck. Raphael West was regarding me with his usual penetrating gaze. He stood on the opposite side of the Saloon, next to Eliza and James. With a word of apology, he left them, and crossed to our corner.

“Mr. Chute,” he said with a bow.

“Mr. West.” Our host inclined his head. “I suppose you are
wanting some stronger stuff than Madeira, eh? A glass of claret, perhaps?”

“Thank you, no. I merely wished to learn what determination you reached with Lord Bolton, as to the inquest.”

“We are all on tenterhooks, Will,” Thomas-Vere said archly. “The vulgar whiff of a publick enquiry must excite the interest of each of us. Do not be keeping your business close to your vest, I beg.”

William Chute glanced about the Saloon. As if aware of his roving eye, everyone but Lady Gambier turned to him expectantly. She maintained an aloof self-sufficiency; I now knew that for a pose.

“There is the figure for your sketchbook,” I murmured to Raphael West. “That appearance of indifference is an art won only by decades of study. You would do well to capture it.”

“I prefer the engaged mind to the retiring one,” he replied. He let his notebook fall open at his knee; to my astonishment I observed a sketch of myself—crouched over the knot of wire I had discovered in the snow. I looked up at him swiftly and would have spoken, but William Chute forestalled me.

“You all must know that I have been speaking to Lord Bolton this morning regarding an inquest on Lieutenant Gage’s death,” he said to the room. “We are agreed that it is more than probable the Lieutenant did not die by accident, as was assumed.”

There was the briefest of silences. Then, “Good God, man!” my brother James cried. “You cannot mean he killed himself?”

“No,” Chute agreed. “I should think that most unlikely.”

“You mean,” said a clear, low voice from the doorway, “that Jack was murdered.”

All our heads turned as one. Miss Gambier stood there, her face white as paper.

“Nonsense,” Lady Gambier said crisply. She rose from her retired
position and stared coldly at her niece. “Do not be making a cake of yourself, Mary. If you cannot master your worse nature and appear in publick with the composure required of a lady, you would do well to remain in your room.”

I saw Eliza shift uneasily and raise one hand, as if to stop the unfeeling words. Edward Gambier took one step towards his aunt, his brows knit in anger. But anything he might have said was forestalled by the Master of The Vyne.

“That is exactly what I meant, my dear,” William Chute assured Miss Gambier, as tho’ her ladyship had never spoken. “Will you not join us? A glass of Madeira would do you good.”

“Thank you, sir.” Without the slightest notice of her ladyship, Miss Gambier glided towards a chair Raphael West held out for her. “I should like a glass of wine.”

While her host fetched one, James began to bluster. “But this must be nonsense, Chute! Or at the very least—a grievous mistake. It is impossible for Lieutenant Gage to have been murdered. Why, the tracks of his horse never reached the road!”

So James, too, had noticed that fact.

William Chute pressed the glass of Madeira into Mary Gambier’s hand. “You are correct, Austen. Gage’s horse did not leave The Vyne park. Which makes the matter much more personal—and dictates clearly that I may take no hand in the investigation myself. That is why I have sought advice of Lord Bolton. He has elected to notify the Coroner in Basingstoke. He hopes to have a jury empanelled the day after tomorrow—Friday. Your sister will have to give evidence.”

“My sister?” James looked about the Saloon wildly. “I take it you would refer to Jane. I cannot allow it, Chute. To be appearing in a vulgar proceeding such as this—”

“Vulgar?” I said mildly. “When Lord Bolton is the mover?”

“Do you expect him to attend?” Mary asked. “With perhaps Lady Bolton?”

“Do not be ridiculous, my dear,” James said sternly. “Her ladyship is about to be confined. Do not be giving countenance to Jane’s deplorable thirst for publicity. You know full well how she contrives to involve herself in other people’s murders, with no greater object than the achievement of Justice—which had far better be left to Divine Providence!”

Raphael West leaned close to my ear. “Do you, indeed? How very intriguing.”

“Mr. West will also appear,” Chute said, “as I must, myself. Miss Austen will be in excellent hands, James; I shall take prodigious care of her, and carry her to Basingstoke Friday morning.”

“But, sir,” Edward Gambier broke in, “what is it all about? From your remarks, I understand you to mean that someone belonging to The Vyne killed poor Jack. I must suppose you to suspect one of the servants. But why should any of them commit murder? They cannot have known Gage from Adam.”

“I do not suspect my servants.” Chute’s countenance was bleak. “They have all been with me for years—generations, in some cases. Besides, they were at liberty on the day of Gage’s arrival—St. Stephen’s Day—and were probably too foxed on rum punch to have roused themselves early the following morning. No, I do not suspect the servants.”

There was a sharp and deadly silence.

“He suspects his family and friends,” Thomas-Vere drawled.

Mary uttered a shrill shriek.

“How very charitable of you, Will!” the clergyman continued, with false mirth. “So refreshingly apt in this Christmas season, when peace and goodwill walk among men. If one of us is to be
gaoled and hanged, may we at least know why? As our good Gambier enquired—why should any of us kill Gage, whom we barely knew from Adam?”

“The document he brought from Ghent has been stolen,” Chute said abruptly. “It was a delicate paper; he was to have delivered it to the Admiralty, and from thence to Parliament. You see why I must take the Lieutenant’s death as a matter of the most serious moment. He died in the execution of his duty, on business for the Crown.” Lady Gambier thrust aside her embroidery and walked in her stateliest fashion to the Saloon door. “Tricks and stratagems,” she said coldly. “I do not believe a word of it. The man fell from his horse and died; you will discover this paper of yours in the spring, when the snow melts. In the meantime, the Gambiers shall not remain to be insulted at The Vyne. We shall quit this unhappy house tomorrow.”

“I cannot allow it, my lady,” Chute said quietly.

She stopped dead in the doorway. “What did you say?”

“I cannot allow you, or your niece or nephew, to leave. None of your whereabouts at the time of the murder may be corroborated.” William Chute, I gathered, had also been asking questions—probably of his servants. “Indeed, I must insist that you remain under our roof at present, until the inquest, at least, shall be over.”

“How dare you, sir!” Lady Gambier blazed. “What is this impertinence? Shall I find my things searched, for a murder weapon?”

“Not for the weapon—Miss Austen has already discovered that.” He inclined his head in my direction; Miss Gambier glanced at me swiftly. “But all my guests’ rooms are even now being searched. Only the gravest necessity should prompt such an outrage, and I am deeply conscious of the injury I do to all of you—but I have ordered the housemaids and footmen to go through the belongings of every person at The Vyne. The stolen paper must be hidden somewhere,
and if it may be secured, a great deal of future unpleasantness may be avoided.”

“I suggest you search the hearths, then, as well,” Raphael West interjected. “We cannot exclude the possibility that the paper in question has been burnt; and if so, some evidence might remain.”

“But why destroy what one would kill to obtain?” Mary Gambier cried. “It does not make sense!”

“Which is certainly why none of us will put up with such impertinence,” Lady Gambier hissed.

“I cannot agree with you, Aunt,” Mr. Gambier unexpectedly said. “If all within The Vyne’s walls are to be guilty until proved innocent, it is not for us to be excepted. I shall remain, Mr. Chute, and willingly, until you have put a name to Jack’s murderer.”

“Then you are a fool,” his aunt declared. She had turned, at last, in her place in the doorway. “Do you not know what may come of this, Edward? —The injuries that may be visited upon all your family—for the sake of a common sailor?”

“Now it is you who are speaking nonsense,” he returned stoutly.

She stared at him an instant in fury, then swept out of the room.

A
LITTLE FLURRY OF
wonder and hasty conversation ensued among the remainder of the guests. Thomas-Vere secured his brother’s attention by the simple expedient of grasping the collar of his jacket, and talking at him in a modulated form of his usual high-pitched cackle. My mother said prosaically, “It must be impossible, I suppose, for Jane to go in publick without exciting the attention of the violent. I am very sorry for it,” and my brother James’s wife chose that moment to fall from her seat in a dramatic and entirely fictitious swoon.

James so far forgot himself in the excitement of the moment as to dash the contents of his Madeira glass in his wife’s face, which
succeeded in rousing both her consciousness and her wrath. She had donned a white muslin gown this morning—far too youthful for her years, and too paltry for the winter’s chill—and it was now thoroughly stained with the caramel-coloured wine. Her sputtering only increased the confusion. Eliza called for hartshorn; her husband muttered, “Well, well. Mrs. James. You must always be enacting a Cheltenham tragedy.” Miss Gambier looked on with scorn.

Eventually, Mary was compelled to rise from the floor, and in a fainting condition—leaning upon James and effecting to stagger—she was conveyed upstairs. More than one person heaved a sigh of relief when my brother’s wife had disappeared from view.

I rose and gathered my reticule, conscious of a person hovering near.

“I wonder, Miss Austen, if you would accompany me to the Chapel,” Mary Gambier said.

I turned and gazed at her. It was an application from an unexpected quarter.

“I should like to see … Lieutenant Gage, but cannot bear to go alone. I confess I have not the courage.”

I suspected that she prevaricated a little, but being anxious myself for a tête-a-tête with Miss Gambier, I acquiesced.

“I was excessively surprized to learn that you discovered the means by which Jack—Lieutenant Gage—was killed,” she began as we made our way across the Saloon and into the dining parlour. The Ante-Chapel connected to it, and passing through the rooms was the quickest path to the Chapel itself. I made a mental note of that fact—which I had not consciously considered before. One might reach the Chapel—or leave it—by two different routes through the house. I could not at the moment see any significance in the fact, but stored it away regardless. Mary Gambier was still speaking. “I had been told he was thrown from his horse.”

“He was,” I replied. We passed the dining table with the sugar sculpture at its centre, the greens and ribbons fading a little. No fire was yet kindled in the hearth in this room, and the air was chill. The gaieties of Christmas night seemed memories of a distant age. “His neck was broken, as no doubt you were informed. But his horse was not brought down by accident.”

We had reached the Ante-Chapel. It is a small room that owes its existence entirely to John Chute, Walpole’s friend, and is meant to serve as a sort of vestibule to the more ancient Tudor chapel beyond. There are sacred pictures on the walls and a few wooden chairs bearing the Chute crest. I sat down upon one of these. “Stay a moment, and I will tell you what I found.”

“Very well.” She sank into a chair beside me.

“Lieutenant Gage’s horse struck a wire strung between two trees at exactly the height of its knees. The wire was buried in the snow, and thus invisible. I found the ends, tied to the trunks—and later, when the snow had melted, Mr. Chute found the entire length.”

She frowned slightly. “You walked out to the scene of his death? When?”

“A few hours after it occurred. I found Mr. West before me. He was sketching the ground, lest evidence of violence melt away in the sunshine. It is his conclusion, from his interpretation of the marks, that the Lieutenant’s neck was broken after he picked himself up from his injured horse—by an attacker who came upon him from behind. I assume that it is to explain his sketch—and its implications—that he is wanted at the inquest.”

She rose abruptly and paced back and forth across the stone pavings, her hands working at the ends of her shawl. “Why did either of you feel an interest? What can have spurred your concern?”

It seemed an odd question. I should have expected her to
exclaim at the fact of the wire, and wonder whose malice had set such a trap.

“I suppose,” I said slowly, “that I have felt some mystery surrounded you from the moment we arrived at The Vyne, Miss Gambier. You were embarrassed on Christmas Night by a rude charade you were the first to solve—and appeared to take very much to heart. On another occasion, I heard you arguing with a gentleman outside your bedchamber door—and heard that man threaten you. Lieutenant Gage was the object of your affection. Lieutenant Gage died barely four-and-twenty hours after appearing at The Vyne. I rejected the idea of an accident from the first. Even without the later intelligence that the poor man had been robbed of his dispatches, his death was bound to interest me.”