Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (39 page)

“I feat; Henry, that the Earl's affections are apportioned to another,” I told him, “and that all of society shall know of it in a very little while.”

“Worse luck for you, Jane,” my brother replied; “did he make a go of the plantations, as his wife you might come in for quite a pretty amount of pin money—and Eliza will have it that there is nothing like being a Countess.” As always, the mention of his vivacious wife's name brought a smile to Henry's lips. He had borne with Eliza's retention of her title with good grace.

“Now tell me of Madame Delahoussaye,” I urged, with a keener interest.

Henry steepled his fingers before his nose, for all the world like our father, did he but know it. “Though her daughter possesses thirty thousand pounds in trust, the good Creole lady hasn't a farthing in her purse, nor one she can borrow,” he said comfortably, little comprehending the effect his words should have. “She depends entirely upon the household of her niece, one reason she is so faithful a companion, and stands to lose much by the reversal in Isobel's fortunes.”

“But how can this be?” I cried. “I understood Madame to be a woman of easy circumstances.”

“I fear that we may only speak of wealth in the past tense, Jane. In fact, her banker—old Robeson, of the London concern—is most desirous of investigating Madame Delahoussaye's accounts more thoroughly, in what I may only term an audit. Robeson suspects some irregularities in the disposition of some trust income Madame oversees, but would say no more, in deference to the lady's privacy, no matter how much I plied him with Port.”

I
THANKED HENRY PROFUSELY FOR HIS BENEVOLENCE ON
my behalf, and vowed I should never do him recompense for such goodness; and he left me with much to consider. I do not begin to understand the motives for Madame Delahoussaye's behaviour; they are all of a tangle, between her own need and her daughter's prospects of fortune; from Henry's words, Madame should only lose by placing Isobel in a noose—and yet, and yet! That she is concealing something of import, I am utterly convinced.

I believe Lord Harold to be a party to Madame's intrigue, and that neither is a friend to Isobel, or concerned with her fate. But how to force the matter? I am overcome with the proximity of the trial, which is to open the day after tomorrow; and must suffer Fanny Delahoussaye's tirades over the state of her costume. She has emerged from mourning the gallant Lieutenant long enough to harry a bevy of shopkeepers, and my sole consolation in the trial's fast approaching, is that it shall witness an end to such frippery—and to my tenure, for good or ill, among the intimates of Scargrave. I fear that I shall be returning to Bath with a heavy heart, and the knowledge that I have mortally failed a true and innocent friend.

Journal entry, that same day

˜

SIR WILLIAM REYNOLDS HAS BEEN AND GONE—A BRIEF VISIT,
with the sole purpose of informing me that I am to be called before the Bar as a witness for the prosecution. The magistrate intends me to testify to the finding of the maid's body and all that ensued thereafter however little I may relish the office. That my old friend suffers for me, and my divided loyalties, I read in his eyes; but Sir William is a man of iron where he believes himself to be right, and my feeble efforts at prevarication availed me nothing.

“I shall be struck dumb by the grandeur of the room, and the assemblage,” I protested. “Can not you present my experiences on my behalf?”

Sir William's kind brown eyes could not meet my own. “It is impossible, my dear. You alone discovered the handkerchief and Marguerite, and the scrap of paper within her bodice.” A brief smile played over his grave countenance. “Had you been less curious, my dear, or sent your active wits to sleep, we might not have you in this pickle.”

And so I shall enter the House of Lords, and seat myself in the ranks reserved for witnesses, below those marked out for peeresses in the gallery—and I must speak before all assembled, without disgrace. Though it is no more than I expected, I am sick at heart; to face Isobel and Lord Scargrave in the box, and pronounce what must be damning to their cause, is a hideous fate. And yet, what choice have I? I shall be sworn, and must speak the truth as I recall it, though friendship—nay, human decency—would argue otherwise.

Sir William departed not long after, having business of a pressing nature. As I waved him down the marble steps to his carriage, he shook his head over the Payne family seal, swathed in black and mounted on the facade of the house over each of the long windows. Thus Scargrave House proclaims Tom Hearst's death—but another in an increasing cause for mourning.

No further ceremony shall mark the Lieutenant's passing, however; as a suicide, he is to be buried tomorrow at a crossroads some distance west of the city, with a stake driven through his heart. I shudder to think it; for such a man—riven with faults as he may have been—to end in the most indifferent of earth, without benefit of clergy or memorial marker, is in every way horrible. His brother is to accompany the body. The poor batman Jack Lewis—quite downcast and morose—goes along as well, and the good Mr. Cranley; a singular mark of that barrister's devotion to the family's concerns that I must believe is intended to comfort silly Fanny Delahoussaye.

Mr. Cranley looks increasingly worried whenever he calls; and from his few words, I have learned that his defence is to rely solely on the notion that Fitzroy Payne's letter was stolen and Isobel's handkerchief purloined. For; in truth, he has no other suspects— and though I would dearly love Lord Harold Trowbridge to be arraigned, I cannot say upon what charge. There is no evidence to tie any but the Earl and the Countess to these murders; and so I toss and turn in bed of nights, and wonder greatly at what may be the purpose in collusion between Madame Delahoussaye and
that man.
But today, I bethought myself of Frank.

My brother Francis is a post captain in the Royal Navy these two years past, and is presently stationed at Ramsgate, about the coastal defences. I cannot think with Frank to prevent it, that the French under Buonaparte are likely to invade our little island; and in the meanwhile, as he assembles his Sea Fencibles
²
about Pegwell Bay, my dear brother might just as readily occupy himself in determining the use of a private deep-water port in the Barbadoes. That Lord Harold has recently visited France, and is bent upon acquiring such a port in the Indies, must give one pause; there is intrigue here, and Frank is sure to parse out the meaning. I wrote to him this morning, and am impatient for his reply.

And now I must see to my wardrobe, for assuredly I possess nothing grand enough for the witness-bar of the Royal Gallery. And what am I to say?
Only the truth
, Sir William told me this morning, as he stepped into his carriage—but what he believes to be true, and what I
know
to be false, are one and the same.

1. Henry Austen refers here to the London Stock Exchange, founded in Change Alley in 1698. Before the mid-nineteenth-century dismantling of restrictive legislation on joint-stock companies (the result of the South Sea Bubble crisis and its resultant 1720 Act forbidding the formation of companies except by royal charter, or Act of Parliament), the Exchange was concerned primarily with public funds: government stock, East India bonds, canal-company shares, and later utilities and dock-company stocks.

2. This was a corps of fishermen and coastal villagers equipped with boats—a sort of seaside militia—placed on alert in the event of invasion. —
Editor's note.

˜

HOWEVER UNFORTUNATE THE CIRCUMSTANCES,
I
MAY
justly say that the display of British might that is the House of Lords, fully assembled for trial—a thing that happens not above once in a generation—has not its equal for solemnity and grandeur. The youngest barons proceeded first, and the august file closed with the most ancient of dukes, all shepherded by heralds and the Garter at Arms—two hundred-odd men, arrayed in robes that signified their ranks in the peerage, filing two by two into benches ranged on either side of the Royal Gallery's Bar. On the high dais sat a chair meant for the Lord High Steward.

Below it were the seats reserved for peeresses; here should Isobel have sat, had fortune been kinder. These gave way to Mr. Cranley and Sir William's place, and then to the witnesses’ seats, in one of which I found myself. Lizzy Scratch was to my right, looking well-scrubbed and defiantly in her element, despite the incongruity of her position; I feared her spirits should take a theatrical turn, once called before the Bar. Dr. Philip Pettigrew sat to my left, and beside him the cherubic scholar of Cambridge, Dr. Percival Grant.

Madame Delahoussaye and her daughter were lodged above, in the spectators’ gallery; the briefest of glances revealed their seats to my indifferent eye. Miss Fanny had adopted the dubious mystery of a quantity of black silk veiling about her blond curls; it was sheer enough to disclose a flash of blue eyes and white teeth, while enshrouding her in all the discretion her interesting circumstances demanded. I knew her to be wishing for a greater part in the drama—or a wider stage, at least, for the parading of her costume; and would gladly have exchanged my place for hers.

A solemn bell tolled the hour; all rose; and a Proclamation of Silence was issued by the Serjeant at Arms. The Clerk of the Crown then knelt to present the Commission under the Great Seal to the Lord High Steward, who returned it to him; at which point the Clerk read its substance aloud, at interminable length, and we were treated to a declaration of “God Save the King!”

We must then endure the Certiorari and Return, a summary of the House of Lords’ authority to preside over the case, with each and every peer a judge of fact and of law; much precedent was stated for their office, and many mouldy precepts of common law dredged before the assembly; but at last, when I had almost despaired of my sanity, we were informed of the decision of the Assizes to try Fitzroy Payne and the Countess for murder.

“The Jurors for our Lord the King upon their oaths present that the most noble lady Isobel Amelie Collins Payne, Countess of Scargrave, a peeress of the realm, on the twelfth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and two, in the Parish of Scargrave, did kill and murder Frederick William Payne, seventh Earl of Scargrave. We further find that the most noble Fitzroy Gerald Payne, Viscount Payne, Earl of Scargrave, a peer of the realm, on the twenty-fourth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and two, in the Parish of Scargrave, did kill and murder one Marguerite Dumas, maidservant, native of the Barbadoes.”

At that point, following the proclamation by the Serjeant at Arms, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod brought in first the Countess, and then the Earl, and escorted them severally to the Bar, where they knelt until the Lord High Steward allowed them to rise.

Isobel's face was pale, and her once-lovely eyes had lost their lustre; some of the dirt and stench of Newgate had been washed from her person, but the freshness of her twenty-two years was yet overlaid with a haggard-ness that bespoke great turmoil of mind. The marks of her ordeal could not disguise her beauty, though they added something of romantic interest to her aspect. I had learned, upon my arrival that day, that her conveyance from Newgate was stoned by a mob, and that she was jeered as murderess and whore; the public had passed swift sentence upon my friend, without benefit of a hearing.

Lord Scargrave retained his accustomed command of countenance, evidencing only a deeper gravity in the tightness of his jaw and the unwavering aspect of his gaze. He was led with Isobel to stools placed within the Bar; where the pair should be confined for the duration of the proceedings, and the charges against them were read. The Clerk of the Parliaments then arraigned them, and asked whether they were Guilty or Not Guilty, to which they severally replied, Not Guilty—Isobel in the merest whisper, her hand to her throat, while Fitzroy Payne's voice rang through the chamber. His glance was haughty, his silver head held high; and though, from knowing him a little, I judged this the result of a struggle for composure, I well knew how it should be judged.
Proud and cold
, he would be proclaimed; and his very effort at self-control play against him.

Sir William Reynolds now rose, and the weight of my duty fell full upon me at the sight of his benign old face.
He
was a friend, and
she
was a friend; and between them they had made a mockery of my better feeling.

The magistrate looked very fine, indeed, in a dark grey tail coat of excellent wool, arrayed with a double row of gold buttons; and at his neck, the highest of white cravats I had ever seen—the collar tips reaching nearly to his ears. Thrown over all was a black silk robe; the awful weight of the Law he bore upon his aged countenance; and his bewigged head might almost be that of Jehovah, come to divide the guilty from the innocent. I quailed when his hard brown eyes fell upon myself, though I fancied they softened at the sight of my pale face; and understood of a sudden why the name
Sir William Reynolds
was everywhere greeted with trepidation and respect, among his adversaries at the Bar.