Pride and Prescience (27 page)

Parrish furrowed his brows. “That’s some sort of star symbol, right? Has something to do with witchcraft? Professor Randolph no doubt knows. I’d ask him more about it.”

“Thank you. I will.”

_______

Hurst entered the drawing room and went straight for the sherry decanter. Darcy intercepted him. He wanted at least the start of the interview to be conducted while Hurst was still sober.

“Allow me, Hurst.” He lifted the carafe and, with slowness visibly excruciating to the other gentleman, poured half a glass of wine. He did not immediately hand it over. “Please, have a seat.”

Hurst regarded Darcy uncertainly, then glanced to the other men. Elizabeth he ignored entirely. “What’s this? What’s going on here?”

“Nothing alarming, Hurst,” Bingley reassured him. “The constable just has a few questions for all of us about last night. He’s trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Kendall, and he’s hoping one of us saw something that can help him piece it all together.”

Hurst remained standing. “I don’t know anything about it. Didn’t even know the man, except for meeting him during his visit here.”

Darcy handed him the sherry. “Did you not play billiards with him?”

“Once.”

“What did you talk about?”

Hurst drained the glass. “Fox hunting. Shooting. He did most of the talking. Kept rambling about flushing prey out of their dens, or something or another. You know I’m not much of a sportsman, Darcy. I just let him go on.”

Darcy looked to the constable, preferring to let the official take over the questioning so as not to put himself in the role of Hurst’s antagonist.

“When did you last see Mr. Kendall?” the constable asked.

“In the billiards room. He was with Darcy when I left.”

“And where did you go?”

“To my chamber.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“All afternoon. I—I took a nap.” He swallowed hard, sending his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Might I have another glass of sherry?”

“We’re almost finished. Can you think of anybody who might have wished Mr. Kendall dead?”

Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. “No, not a one.”

The constable’s gaze flickered to Hurst’s waistcoat. “I’m told you carry a pocketknife. Is that true?”

Hurst’s eyes narrowed. “Yes—lots of gentlemen do. What of it?”

“May I see it?”

Grumbling, Hurst produced the pocketknife. The constable opened it. The blade was clean. It extended three inches, and was perhaps half an inch wide at its base.

The constable folded the knife and returned it. “Mr. Hurst, do you know what a pentagram is?”

“A what? No. I haven’t the foggiest.” He handed his glass back to Darcy with a shaking hand. “Are we done now?”

“Yes, Mr. Hurst. Thank you.”

The normally sluggish Hurst could not leave the room fast enough.

That night, Darcy entered his chamber, and his wife’s embrace, like a man seeking sanctuary. Whatever trouble surrounded them, Elizabeth’s presence brought peace to his world. How he had lived without her in the days before they met, he could scarcely remember.

She gently directed him to sit down while she rubbed the tension out of his shoulders. “Tuppence for your thoughts.”

He groaned. With her hands on his back, he ought to be able to banish all unpleasantness from his mind, but he could
not. Pieces of the day kept intruding, nagging him to ponder them until he knew what had happened to Lawrence Kendall. “I cannot figure out what Randolph’s watch was doing in Kendall’s hand, or why that symbol was used. Setting those details aside for the moment, Hurst emerges as the most likely suspect. He’s the only one with a clear motive, and his claim that he passed the
whole
afternoon napping is hard to believe—even for Hurst. Circumstantial evidence points to him.

“Yet the watch puts Randolph in the room at the time of the murder, and who else knows about symbols like that?” he continued. “And he, too, owns a knife. The physical evidence implicates the professor. But why would he kill Kendall?”

“Other than general principle?” She massaged the corded muscles of his neck.

“There is no connection between the two of them. At least, none that I can see.”

“That’s because you are looking with your eyes. I think the connection is in Randolph’s head.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I believe Randolph is a fanatic, bent on using his supernatural knowledge toward some ill purpose. He begged me today to obtain his watch from you and get Mrs. Parrish to wear it on her person, without her husband’s awareness. He claims it will help her, but I think that watch is the root of all her problems. It’s cursed somehow, or he has used it to curse her. It bears the same pentagram symbol that was on the floor and carved into the corpse—I shudder to contemplate what diabolical ceremony he conducted on Mr. Kendall at the time of the murder.”

This again?
As much as Darcy respected his wife’s mind, he could not understand her willingness to entertain such preposterous notions. She was a smart woman, gifted with wit perhaps greater than his own. Yet she allowed herself to indulge in ideas that held no more credibility than faerie stories. “I would
like to curse
him
for putting these thoughts in your head.”

“Mr. Kendall was killed on the same day that I interrupted whatever ritual Randolph was performing on Caroline. A day that seems to hold meaning for him—the winter solstice.”

“I agree that he may have tried to invoke some mystical effect with that symbol, perhaps even related, in his own mind, to the date. But attempting and doing are two different things, and I do not believe him—or anyone—capable of magic.”

Her hands stilled. “I am quite serious. There is something unnatural going on at Netherfield. I can feel it.” She came round to face him. “I—I sense things sometimes. Indistinct impressions. Randolph—when he spoke to me today, it was as if an alarm sounded within me. We should not dismiss his studies as nonsense. He possesses some power—some knowledge.”

“He possesses a watch that was found in a place it should not have been.”

“And why would Kendall clutch it in his dying moments if Randolph hadn’t been using it somehow at the time of the murder?”

Darcy pondered a moment. Why indeed? “Kendall was struck from behind. To me, that indicates that he did not grab the watch to interrupt some ritual. Rather, it was already in his hand as he was leaving. But even if Randolph was futilely trying to conduct sorcery, what killed Kendall was a knife wound.”

Elizabeth’s expression grew cold. “You will not believe me.” She crossed to the window and gazed into the darkness, her back to him. It was the first night of the new moon, and the blackness outside Netherfield’s walls matched the gloom within.

“Elizabeth, if Randolph could command the kind of power you think him capable of, why would he resort to killing
Kendall with a physical weapon? Would he not instead slay him with a lightning bolt or something?”

“Do not mock me.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I am not some simpleminded country girl. I may not have had an education equal to your own, and as a woman, I cannot move about in the world like you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how it works.”

He crossed to her, put his hand to her shoulder. “Elizabeth—”

She shrugged him off. “Do you think I cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy?” She turned to face him. “Do you think I am that foolish?”

He had hurt her. Without meaning to, he had hurt his wife, and he wasn’t sure what to do to make it right. He could not believe in the ridiculous, and he would not lie to her by pretending to. “I do not think you are foolish,” he said finally. “Only misled.”

“And I do not think you are arrogant.” She blinked back angry tears and turned again toward the window. “Only blind.”

The amulet called to her from across the room.

All right—it didn’t call, exactly. It lay silent in the top drawer of the highboy where Darcy had placed it. And it was a watch, not an amulet. Just a watch.

Yet it arrested Elizabeth’s attention like no object ever had.

She sat upright on the bed, hugging her knees, staring at the drawer. Darcy had departed the room for the moment, summoned by Bingley on some late errand just as he’d been about to retire. He’d left Randolph’s timepiece behind.

Deliver the watch to Mrs. Parrish without her husband’s knowledge, the professor had exhorted. For what purpose—fair or fell? What did the supernaturalist think or hope it could do?

She crossed the room and slid open the drawer. The watch
rested in the corner, its chain pooled around it. Despite Randolph’s claims, it appeared innocuous—a simple timepiece, albeit one with unusual markings. She grasped the fob and slowly pulled it out of the drawer.

Firelight danced across the silver as the watch gently swung like a pendulum from her fingertips. She detected a faint humming noise—surely deriving from its movement, nothing more. The sound distracted her, and the sway made it further difficult for her to study the engraving. The five-pointed star and its surrounding circle remained fixed, but a shape within the star seemed to change in the uneven light. It looked to her like a man, standing with arms and legs spread to the sides. She tried to focus but the image would not hold still. It shifted—one moment visible, the next not.

She grasped the watch itself to stop its swing and get a closer look. But as she touched it, intense heat seared her hand. She let go. It dropped back into the drawer, which she quickly shut. She then darted just as quickly away from the chest to stand, heart hammering, near the fireplace.

The heat had lasted but a moment—gone so fast that she wondered if she’d only imagined the sensation. It left no burn or other mark. But she could still feel the weight of the watch in her palm.

She shuddered, anxious for Darcy to return. She needed his presence to chase away the shadows that now seemed to dance on every surface in the room.

What, oh, what had Professor Randolph brought to Netherfield?

“There was truth in his looks.”

Elizabeth to Jane,
Pride and Prejudice,
Chapter 17

I
demand an explanation.”

“I will do my best to oblige you.”

Juliet Kendall ignored Bingley’s gestured invitation to take a seat. She instead remained standing in the middle of the drawing room where Darcy and Bingley had found her pacing upon their entrance. Cloudy late-morning light filtered through the windows, softening but not flattering her sharp features.

Upon learning of her father’s death, Miss Kendall had taken advantage of the morning’s break in the weather to swoop down upon Netherfield, talons glinting as she hunted for information. The gloomy sky threatened more snow—and with it, the extended stay of yet another unwelcome Kendall. What was it about this family that procured them weather favorable for travel
to
Netherfield, but turned it to prevent their departure?

Darcy did not envy his friend the ordeal of this meeting. What little they had to tell her—that her father’s business dealings and conduct had ultimately made him reprehensible
enough that no one had realized his death for hours and the killer could be one of several people—would not be pleasant for her to hear, and would no doubt elicit a response equally unpleasant. Darcy would sooner debate with Elizabeth the likelihood of Randolph’s occult powers.

“My father was murdered under your roof. I want to know by whom.”

“As I wrote in my letter, the local authorities are still investigating the matter.”

“Yes, I have already met with the constable. He believes Professor Randolph was involved. Where is he? I demand to speak with him.”

Bingley sent for the professor. As they awaited him, Miss Kendall repeated her questions, as if asking them enough times would somehow yield an answer where moments before none existed. The constable, it seemed, had spared her the more gruesome details of the crime, and Darcy and Bingley endeavored to keep those facts secret. Other information they truly did not possess.

Miss Kendall grew increasingly irritable. “Did no one see anything?” she asked for the fourth time. “Hear anything? A man died among you, and no one noticed?”

Bingley cleared his throat. “It is a large house. . . .” He glanced to Darcy with an expression of entreaty.

“I assure you, Miss Kendall, that we are doing all we can to learn what happened,” Darcy offered.

She ignored him. “Mr. Bingley, this is your house. Until the murderer’s identity is ascertained, I hold you responsible for my father’s death.”

“You have my most sincere condolences—”

“I don’t want condolences. I want answers. And then I want someone’s head on a platter.”

After fifteen excruciating minutes, the servant returned. “Mr. Bingley, sir, I cannot find the professor.”

“Where have you looked?”

“Throughout the house.”

“Check the grounds. Perhaps he has gone for a walk.”

More time passed. Eventually Miss Kendall’s shrill voice lapsed into hostile silence. At last the servant reappeared, but with disappointing news. The search had turned up no Randolph.

“His trunk is still here but his greatcoat and traveling clothes are gone,” the footman reported. “So is one of the horses.”

Randolph had fled during the night. To escape the consequences of his crime? Though Darcy still struggled to pinpoint a motive for the professor to kill Kendall, evidence against Randolph was mounting. He silently berated himself for his stupidity—why had he not taken steps to have the archeologist watched more closely after the murder?

Miss Kendall regarded Bingley accusingly. “You
are
going to pursue him, aren’t you?”

“I—well, of course. We’ll send a rider out toward . . .” He looked to Darcy for guidance. “He said at dinner the other night that he would return to London?”

“Yes, but that was before the murder was discovered and he became a suspect. As he left his trunk here and disappeared without taking leave, there is no reason to believe he still intends to go there.” Darcy frowned as he considered the possibilities. A lone rider on horseback, Randolph could be headed anywhere. Perhaps a port city, seeking passage to America? “Let us summon Mr. Parrish. They are friends—or were. Perhaps he can guess where Randolph might go. The professor may have even spoken to him before he left and dropped some hint.”