Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (15 page)

That afforded me little time to learn, as best I might, where each of The Vyne’s people was during the period—so brief as half or three-quarters of an hour—between Lieutenant Gage’s departure
yesterday and the return of his horse to the stables. Most of the guests had no inkling, as yet, that Lieutenant Gage was murdered. All but the guilty party should own their whereabouts frankly, if properly approached.

Three of the Austens—Mary, Cassandra, and I—were entirely excluded from suspicion. We had been seated together in the morning room, debating the merits of
puits d’amour
and sack cream with Eliza Chute. To this list of irreproachable females I must add my mother, for I refuse to credit that a lady of five-and-seventy, who is subject to occasional gout, should be capable of breaking a strong young Naval officer’s neck. Thomas-Vere Chute might also be absolved—except that he had quitted our conference in the morning room for an interval, to search for Raphael West. Admittedly, he had not been gone very long—and at his return his clothing showed no signs of his having been out in the snow—but a good coat and pair of boots might have disguised the signs of violence; and he was decidedly out of breath when he burst upon us once more.

If Thomas-Vere had turned traitor, it must be for want of funds. He had not the passion for a political polemicist. He was likely an expensive creature, however—Taste being a fierce master in the realm of Dress, Art, and the pleasures of the Theatre—and a clergyman’s means are slim. For all I knew, he might frequent gaming hells; the Dandy Set often did. As William Chute’s brother, with unquestioned intimacy in the Member’s household, he should be a ready tool for any foreign power willing to pay his fees; and he was silly enough to find the rôle of spy amusing.

I decided to go in search of the gentleman.

The house party had arranged itself in groups this morning. My mother and Lady Gambier were in the Saloon, a comfortable and brightly-lit space with an entire wall of windows giving out onto the
lake. The Chutes’ pianoforte was here, a lovely rosewood instrument with bronze caryatid mounts on the legs; I longed to practise my polonaises—Mr. L’Anglois had been as good as his word, and left his sheet music in my keeping—but I profited from circumstance, and directed my attention to Louisa Gambier. At the hour the Lieutenant had been killed, she was taking breakfast on a tray in her room; once the body was recovered and Miss Gambier overcome, Eliza had sent a servant to her ladyship, to advise her to attend to her niece. I must ask Eliza if Lady Gambier had indeed been discovered in her room. She might, however, have been anywhere during the interval between Lieutenant Gage’s departure and his sad return. For none of us had seen her. Implausible as Lady Gambier’s guilt must seem, it behooved me to talk to her.

“I am glad to find you at ease here, ma’am, and recovered enough from your indisposition to join the rest of the party,” I said.

“So kind,” she murmured, and adjusted her spectacles to peer more closely at her embroidery. Lady Gambier’s frequent resort to her bedchamber and her smelling salts would lead one to believe her a fragile creature, but she is stout enough in appearance, with a heavy knot of grey hair and a thick body expensively clothed. I studied her profile and could find nothing of James’s late Anne in its lineaments. And yet they were cousins.

“I have been telling her ladyship about Anna’s wedding,” my mother confided. “She remembers our dear Anne from General Mathew’s day, but never chanced to meet with her daughter. My first grandchild, married! I cannot count how many I must own, now—nearly thirty, but for the loss of Charles’s poor mite only a few months ago.” She lowered her voice in a confiding way and leaned towards Lady Gambier. “My son’s wife died a week after being brought to bed at Sheerness, and the child survived only a fortnight.”

“Very sad,” her ladyship murmured.

I could not think this a happy choice of subject. Lady Gambier, as my mother should have considered, had never borne a child. But she surprized me by offering a confidence in her turn.

“I could never bear to live aboard,” she declared, “and to his credit, the Admiral has never asked it of me. Such filth and sickness! Such a coarse mode of life, among low sailors! The situation is not fit for a lady.”

“With such opinions of the Service, you must have been very attached to the Admiral to marry him,” I observed.

Her ladyship glanced at me contemptuously. “I had been on the shelf for any number of years, Miss Austen, when James Gambier paid his addresses. It was unlikely another offer would ever be made to me. Mary feels a similar urgency—but the Navy would not have answered. So I told her. But so it ever is. The Young do not wish to profit from the experiences of their elders.”

“Was there … an attachment between Miss Gambier and Lieutenant Gage?” I suggested diffidently.

“If there was,” Lady Gambier said, “it is all at an end, is it not? Miss Gambier is in no danger of throwing herself away, now.”

She set down her embroidery and looked me full in the face. Her dark eyes were pitiless.

“You are to be congratulated, ma’am, on having preserved her from a folly worse than death,” I said.

My mother, I am sure, detected my bitterness.

I
FOUND
T
HOMAS
-V
ERE
C
HUTE
in the billiards room, at the far end of the house—a place I had never had occasion to enter before, as it lay beyond the drawing-room and a small anteroom between, which Eliza liked to call her China Room. Having failed to find the
elegant clergyman in the library—where my brother was loitering in some agitation and the hope of a chance meeting with Lord Bolton—I abandoned the upper floor. The sound of clicking ivory balls led me through the drawing-room and porcelain displays beyond, and there, to my satisfaction, was not only Thomas-Vere, but Edward Gambier and my nephew, James-Edward.

Thomas-Vere was dressed all in black, as became a man of the cloth; but this was so unusual—he was an addict of sartorial splendour—that I must assume it was in respect of the Dead. His wig this morning was steel grey, a sombre hue, tied with black satin ribbon.

“Miss Austen!” he cried. “How delightful! We had hoped to make West stand as our fourth, but he is nowhere to be found. Pray, take up a cue and we shall set the balls afresh.”

“Aunt does not play,” James-Edward broke in. “There is no table at Chawton Cottage.”

“But happily,” I replied as I took down an idle cue from the rack, “there is a handsome one at your Uncle Edward’s house in Kent. I have long been in the practise of playing there, James-Edward, so be careful what you are about. I shall claim Mr. Chute as my partner, and we shall give you two young exquisites a drubbing. Win? Lose? Or Carombole?”
⁴

“All three,” James-Edward said, his chin lifting dangerously. “It would be devilish flat, otherwise.”

“Very well,” I replied, purposely ignoring the cant language that
should have won a stinging rebuke from his father. “Sixteen points, sirs, a penny per point. Mr. Chute and I shall give you and Mr. Gambier two points to start, as a handicap.”

This was a notable bit of bravado on my part, but no matter; if James-Edward and his partner beat us soundly in a matter of moments, I should have more time to interrogate Thomas-Vere. But in the event, we were smartly matched. Mr. Gambier was a proficient, as befit a languorous gentleman who spent his hours in the clubs of Pall Mall and the country houses of the Great. His fingers were steady, his shots deft. James-Edward betrayed all the excitement inevitable in a Winchester schoolboy, and was prone to slashing his cue across the green surface like a swordsman. His ball was rather more apt to leap in the air and land on his opponent’s toe, than find a pocket. Happily, I had chosen to wear my half-boots of jean that morning, and was thus impervious.

I was a careful and deliberate player. What I lacked in dash, I more than made up for in accuracy. Thomas-Vere, however, was a flamboyant soul. He pirouetted about the table like an opera dancer, deploying his cue behind his back. If the essence of a man is revealed in his play, then Thomas-Vere was a gambler: he never hesitated on the brink of risk. Sometimes his shots went wide; but more often than not they went home. This naturally underlined his native complaisance.

“Our luck is in, Miss Austen,” he confided as we approached our turn, four points in advance of our opponents. “Observe, callow fellows, as I carom both cue ball and object!”

He contorted himself into a human knot, the better to achieve the necessary attitude, and thrust his cue home. Our ball struck the red one, then skittered towards the table’s bank, missing our enemy’s cue ball by a hair.

I eyed the result resignedly. “I believe, Mr. Chute,” I said, “that
I prefer skill to luck. Winning, sirs!” And I shot our ball off theirs, into the pocket.

“Ho-hey!” Thomas-Vere cried, and applauded with his long, white hands.

Edward Gambier bowed. “Honoured, ma’am, to lose to so pretty a player.”

“I have not got any pennies at present, Aunt,” James-Edward stammered, “but perhaps I may meet my obligations in a few days’ time.” It was customary to give the children their Christmas Boxes—small gifts of loose coins—on Twelfth Night. I might have told my nephew to think no more of his pennies—but that should have shamed him before Mr. Gambier, who was obviously a favourite.

I curtseyed to James-Edward, therefore. “I shall accept your vowels, sir—and request the honour of a second match, when you may win your own back again.”
⁵

James-Edward flushed. “With pleasure. We shall have to play tonight, Aunt, for Papa says we are to leave tomorrow.”

“Impossible!” Thomas-Vere cried. “How is The Vyne to endure the remainder of the season, without the Austens to give it spice?”

“You must secure Mr. West as your billiards partner,” I replied. “Tho’ he seems a most elusive gentleman. You could not find him yesterday, as I recall—when you quit the morning room.”

“Aye,” Thomas-Vere said, and his gaiety fled at the memory. “I soon gave up the search, however, once the groom knocked upon the door. Poor Gage!”

“You chanced to be crossing the Staircase Hall, I suppose, when the groom appeared?”

“Not directly,” Thomas-Vere replied. “I had looked into this room, thinking West might be with you, Gambier—”

“And I told you I thought he was about his sketching of your brother, in the book room,” Gambier replied.

“Of course. The poses, for the Parliamentary picture.” I felt a curious sense of relief. Naturally Raphael West had been occupied yesterday morning after Lieutenant Gage’s departure—he would wish to conclude his job of work and be away from The Vyne.

“But it was all a hum,” Thomas-Vere said petulantly, “for when I hurried up to the library, neither he nor William was there. William was down at the kennels, as the groom told us but a few moments later. It was when I descended once more that I found Roark standing agape at the front door, all the cold blowing in, and the groom with his hand on the gelding’s reins.”

He was correct, of course. Chute had walked up from the direction of the kennels; I had forgot. I had forgot Raphael West’s own words, as well, as we stood together in the snow.

“He mentioned something to me about having been in the Oak Gallery. That is just beyond the book room, is it not? Perhaps he intended to sketch—found Mr. Chute absent—and wandered into the Gallery itself,” I suggested.

The Oak Gallery is a long, many-windowed passage lined with portraits and pictures. It runs the full width of the house along the west side, and is accessible only from the book room and the Chutes’ bedchambers, which are at the rear of the house. These are the former Royal bedchambers, and the Oak Gallery similarly dates from Henry VIII’s time. I had not looked into it during this visit to The Vyne, because Chute and his secretary were forever closeted in the book room, discouraging my entry—but I may attest that the Gallery is one of the most remarkable remnants of early-sixteenth-century
architecture extant in England. It is lined from floor to ceiling with linenfold panelling, carved with various noble arms. Seven mahogany benches march down the centre, covered in leather, so that the interested aesthete might pause and rest while surveying the paintings. I could easily comprehend Raphael West lingering in such a room, his sketchbook in hand.

“I do not think West was entirely honest, then,” Mr. Gambier volunteered in his bluff way, “tho’ I cannot think what it matters, where he was. But when I saw him, just after breakfast, he was in the Chapel—speaking to my sister.”

Lord Bolton disappointed his more ardent admirers by declining Eliza Chute’s offer of refreshment. He asked to view Lieutenant Gage’s body—which was by now decently laid out on a bier in the Chapel, awaiting its coffin from Sherborne St. John—and then departed in the direction of the stables. There, I presume, he examined the gelding’s knees, which had suffered from the cutting impact of the wire. As a gentleman long accustomed to horses, he profited, I am sure, by the latter inspection far more than the former. Broken necks cannot often have come in his way.

Lord Bolton then called for his carriage and made his
adieux
. He went away looking anxious and harassed, perhaps as a result of Mary’s begging him to “remember me to your sweet lady, and pray accept my sincerest wishes for her health and happiness.” As her ladyship was hourly in expectation of her fifth child, Lord Bolton undoubtedly felt his place was at home rather than in Eliza’s Saloon, where a nuncheon had been laid out—but James’s earnest entreaty that he “honour us with your excellent horsemanship when next we ride to
hounds” must have sped him on his road. The Great dislike above all things to be toad-eaten.