Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (20 page)

Cassandra merely shook her head. “What can the concerns of Mary Gambier—in life, or on paper—have to do with that poor man’s murder? William Chute is convinced he was killed for what he carried. Not because of the woman he may have loved.”

“Must it be one or the other?” I mused. “May not the two motives be confused—or even intended to confuse?”

Cassandra straightened. “You mean—that Lieutenant Gage was killed for Mary’s sake, and the document stolen as a sort of diversion?”

I stared at her. “It is possible, I suppose.” Cassandra, naturally, knew nothing of French spies; but perhaps West’s preconceived notions had clouded his judgement. “In that case, Miss Gambier must know the killer. It ought to be the very same person who spoke so harshly to her, mere hours before the deed was done.”

What had the man offered as his parting shot?

Very well, madam. I will know how to act
.

Was this the source of Mary Gambier’s guilt—that she had known it in her power to prevent John Gage’s death, and had withheld whatever his killer demanded?

A feeling of dread rose within me, from the pit of my stomach to the centre of my throat.

“Good God,” I whispered, and bolted to my feet. “The danger—”

“What is it, Jane?”

I stared at my sister wildly. “Mary Gambier has been living with the very person she believes murdered her lover. Dining, conversing, even sleeping under the same roof … when she owns the knowledge to have him hanged! Do you not see, Cassandra? Both of them know that she knows …”

I dressed quickly, pinned up my hair—which reaches now past my knees—and pulled on a serviceable, if spinsterish, lace cap, to hide the haste with which I had completed my toilette. Cassandra was not far behind me, although she persisted in believing I exaggerated Miss Gambier’s risk. I tapped on that lady’s door immediately upon quitting my own, but received no answer.

And there I hesitated.

It was as yet only eight o’clock, and I supposed it possible Miss Gambier still slumbered—if indeed she had been restless in the night and upon her knees in the Chapel, as young Caroline thought.

“Does she answer?” Cassandra enquired.

I shook my head.

“Then leave her, Jane. Rest is what the grieving require.”

We descended to the breakfast-parlour. It was empty save for Mr. L’Anglois.

“You are returned from your errand to London, sir!” I cried.

“But a half-hour. I beg your pardon—I am only just come from the stables to the table, in all my dirt. I stopped only to apprise Mr.
Chute of my return.” He rose and bowed to us both—and very cordially remained standing until we should be seated.

“How did you find the roads?” Cassandra ventured.

“Indifferent so far as Woking, ma’am, but when I reached Hounslow, I perceived a marked improvement. And my return was as nothing at all—the turnpike entirely clear!”

“James will be happy to know it.” Cassandra unfurled her napkin. “He is determined to depart The Vyne today.”

“We shall be sorry to lose you,” L’Anglois said with an earnest look. “And before you have had a chance to essay my sheet music, Miss Jane!”

“I played a little, last evening,” I admitted, “but not your polonaises. I did attempt to find you the morning of Lieutenant Gage’s death,” I added, with hasty improvisation, “but when I went in search of you after breakfast that day, I could not discover you.”

This was a gross untruth, naturally, but let us see what the gentleman produced by way of answer.

“You should not have troubled to do so,” L’Anglois said. “I assured you the music was yours for the asking—It ought to be played.”

“I made a noble attempt to find you. I glanced into the billiards room and the library. Seeing the door to Mr. Chute’s book room standing open, I even glanced in there—tho’ with what trepidation!”

This last was a second falsehood; I had spent the whole of the interval after breakfast on Tuesday in Eliza’s morning room; but I knew that L’Anglois’s employer, William Chute, had been in the stables—and so might risk the suggestion that the book room was empty. I was determined to drop any number of handkerchiefs merely to observe whether L’Anglois picked them up.

“I am sorry to know that you were put to so much trouble,” he
said earnestly. “I shall secure the sheet music directly you are finished with breakfast, Miss Austen, so that you may practise when you chuse, in peace.”

A clever fellow, Benedict L’Anglois—and not to be readily drawn. Vexing, that he refused to confess where he had spent the morning of Lieutenant Gage’s death—but was it instructive? Did it confirm my suspicions—that a man lately employed by a Royal French household had deliberately buried himself in Hampshire, for an object far more important than the advancement of William Chute’s career?

Or did I refine upon a trifle?

The maid appeared, and poured out my tea. I ordered toast; my spirits were so unsettled I could not consider the steaming silver dishes arrayed on the sideboard. The question of Mary Gambier returned to worry me. To be asking after her when half the household were yet abed, was to look too particular; but I attempted a little subterfuge. When the maid had departed, I rose suddenly as tho’ I had forgot something I required, and went after her.

“Has anyone been into Miss Gambier’s room,” I asked her, “to lay the morning fire?”

“I cannot say, ma’am. Would you like me to ask?”

“Indeed. I must leave The Vyne today, and should like to say my farewells to Miss Gambier, but do not wish to disturb her if she is still sleeping.”

The maid dropped a curtsey and went into the serving wing without another word. I dawdled in the passage, aware of the sound of new voices in the parlour behind me; Edward Gambier and Raphael West had come down. Cassandra uttered a soft laugh at something that was said. One of the three men with whom she sat might be a murderer. I felt my heart accelerate.

The maid reappeared. “Lucy made up the fires this morning,
ma’am, at half after six o’clock. She says that your sister was asleep, but you were not in your bed—and neither was Miss Gambier.”

I had been in the nursery wing. Where had Miss Gambier been? The Chapel? If so, she had descended by the Staircase Hall. I could swear that no footsteps had passed the nursery door whilst I sat with Caroline.

I returned to the breakfast-parlour. We should probably discover that Miss Gambier was still at prayer. Surely I refined too much!

“Nothing is to be done at the Congress without Castlereagh,” Mr. L’Anglois was saying. He turned with an air of condescension to my sister. “You will apprehend how vexatious we find this, Miss Austen, when I explain that Castlereagh is not only Foreign Secretary, but Leader of the House. In his absence, our poor Mr. Chute is buried in duties—which I fear he is not attending to as he ought. This affair of the Lieutenant has distracted him from his work.”

Cassandra had long been aware that Lord Castlereagh combined most of the vital services of Government in one brilliant frame; she was not to be deceived into believing William Chute his proxy; but she merely smiled at Benedict L’Anglois. To be continually underestimated is a woman’s lot.

“You are abroad early, Miss Austen,” Edward Gambier observed as he lifted the silver lids on the various dishes. The odour of kidneys assailed my nostrils. “Eager to be away, I expect—as we all are. Devilish flat in the country at the moment, tho’ Chute thinks it possible we may take a gun and a dog out, this morning. Will you hunt with us, West?”

“Gladly,” he said. His eyes drifted to mine. “Is it certain you are to depart, Miss Austen?”

“My brother James rules our party,” I replied, “and James is anxious to be gone. But, Mr. Gambier—surely your sister and Lady
Gambier cannot be wishing to be away! Surely Miss Gambier is fixed at The Vyne until the Lieutenant’s funeral rites are held.”

“I have not discussed the matter with Mary,” he said. “But Aunt would leave on the instant, if she could. I begin to think it would be a kindness to the rest of the party if I should get her la’ship away—she don’t always behave as she ought. Deuced high in the instep. Sets people’s backs up. Regular Tartar, Aunt Louisa!”

“Have you seen your sister this morning?” I asked. “I should like to take my leave of her. But when I knocked upon her door, there was no answer. Perhaps she is yet asleep.”

He shook his head. “I looked into her bedchamber before I came down—the room is empty. I expected to find her here, in fact—but if she’s already taken her breakfast, no doubt she’s gone to the Chapel.”

L’Anglois raised his head from his newspaper frowningly. “In the little time that I have been returned to The Vyne—perhaps three-quarters of an hour—I may say that Miss Gambier took no breakfast.”

Cassandra and I looked at each other.

“Should you like me to walk to the Chapel with you, Jane? I have quite finished.”

The maid had not yet appeared with my toast. “Why not?”

“I shall come with you,” L’Anglois said.

I
N THE END, ANXIETY
proved infectious. The entire breakfast party rose from their seats and hurried with me across the Staircase Hall and along the East Corridor. There is a native stillness to sacred places that dictates one step softly; I pushed open the door to the Ante-Chapel and crept inside.

She lay facedown in a silk dressing gown at the foot of Lieutenant Gage’s bier. Her guinea-gold hair was undone and one arm
outstretched, its fingers curled in supplication. I could see no obvious wound, and for an instant hoped she slept.

“Mary!”

Edward Gambier hurried past me to his sister’s side. He lifted her still form and turned it. And at that moment I knew, beyond all shadow of doubt. Her eyes were staring at the vaulted ceiling, her neck rigid. She had clearly been dead some hours. As Mr. Gambier raised her in his arms, supporting the wretched figure, a small glass bottle rolled across the Flemish tiles.

I stooped to pick it up.

Laudanum.

I handed the thing to Raphael West, who studied it with knitted brows.

“She is so cold,” Mr. Gambier cried. His looks were wild; he was attempting to chafe his sister’s wrists. “Will no one help me?”

“We must carry her from this place.” Benedict L’Anglois sprang to Edward Gambier’s aid, and would have helped him lift the dead Mary from the floor, but West’s voice suddenly rang out.

“No,” he said. “Leave everything as we found it. Miss Jane, would you summon William Chute, and bring him here?”

I hastened without a word from the Chapel, through the dining parlour and the Saloon. At the far end of the latter I encountered Roark.

“Mr. Chute,” I said breathlessly, one hand against my stays. “Pray summon him. There has been … another tragedy.”

The butler turned on his heel and mounted the stairs. I went to stand by the Yule log—its cheerful persistence a mute reproach—and recovered my breath. My fingers were deadly cold, as tho’ Mary Gambier’s chill were somehow catching.

Booted feet, heavy upon the steps beside me; I glanced up.

“Miss Jane,” William Chute said. His countenance was flushed and his hazel eyes anxious. “What is it?”

“Juliet,” I said, “dead beside her Romeo.”

T
HAT IS HOW THE
scene was intended to be read, of course—that the grieving young woman had taken her own life in the middle of the night, chusing to die rather than exist without her beloved John Gage. The guttered candles, as yet unchanged by Eliza’s careful staff; the scent of the lilies; the bier raised before the altar and the girl sprawled in sorrow beside it—all spoke eloquently of a mortal bargain with despair. That was William Chute’s assumption once he viewed poor Mary Gambier’s body; and when West shewed him the empty laudanum bottle, his conviction was entire.

“Did your sister quack herself with these drops?” he demanded of Mr. Gambier.

“I do not know,” the gentleman replied in a bewildered tone. “The contents of Mary’s dressing case were entirely her own affair.”

“You do not recognise the bottle?”

Gambier took it with shaking fingers. “It is the usual chemist’s bottle,” he said. “There is nothing to distinguish it as Mary’s. Aunt may tell you more.”

“Poor child,” Chute said gruffly. “She could not endure her grief, we must suppose. Indeed, she was so sick with it she cannot have known what she was about. Self-murder is a dreadful thing.”

Gambier closed his eyes tightly.

“Is it possible she took too much by accident, sir?” Benedict L’Anglois suggested in broken accents. His pallor was dreadful and his fingers shook. He must indeed have felt an attachment to Miss Gambier—and was now reeling from her loss.

“Naturally that is what occurred, Ben!” Chute snapped, as tho’ his secretary were an imbecile. “You do not think Miss Gambier should have knowingly cut off her own thread? A Christian lady, reared in the strictest principles! We shall inform Lord Bolton just how it was. Distraught—unable to sleep—and perhaps dosing herself overmuch. Now, gentlemen—let us carry her to her bedchamber.”

Impossible that it should be left this way—a probable case of murder, dismissed as accidental suicide! It was imperative that the two deaths be seen for what they were—destruction in tandem, stemming from the stolen Treaty, Mary Gambier’s past, or both. I opened my mouth to speak, but as he moved past me to help lift the body, Raphael West shook his head ever so slightly in the negative. The gesture proclaimed, for one who was watching, that I should keep my opinions to myself. I stepped back, and allowed the solemn procession to pass.

“Miss Austen,” Mr. Chute said hurriedly, “pray carry this dreadful news to my wife. Eliza will see that everything proper is done. And Miss Jane—pray summon your brother. It is only right that a blessing be said over the corpse.”

S
OME HOURS LATER
, I observed from the upper staircase window the arrival of a tradesman’s cart, presumably from Sherborne St. John. It bore the unmistakable draped form of a coffin—the one ordered for Lieutenant Gage. He would be placed in it and borne away for the Angel in Basingstoke—the principal coaching inn being the usual place for the empanelling of an inquest.
⁸