Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

He glared defiantly first at my brother, and then at me, as tho’ suspecting I should be the sort of woman determined to spoil sport. I could not find it in my heart to disappoint him.

“But surely the time of Mr. Fiske’s murder must tell us a good deal about the identity of the one who killed him?” I observed, with all apparent innocence. “It appears to me a vital point. When he was merely a faceless pilgrim, anyone might have done the deed; a mere footpad or chance miscreant. But as a gentleman formerly well-known in the neighbourhood—one returned from distant climes at almost the very hour of his wife’s marriage to another!—Fiske becomes a sinister presence, one of peculiar interest. The very elements of scandal you would suppress, Mr. Moore, are exactly those that must be probed, if the murderer is to be named.”

“Trust a woman to entirely misapprehend the facts,” he retorted impatiently.

“I would argue that my sister has grasped them more clearly than yourself, Moore,” Edward said, with a speaking look for me. “Captain and Mrs. MacCallister were to set out from Chilham Castle on their wedding trip this very morning, were they not? A tour of Cornwall, I collect, where the Captain possesses some acquaintance?”

“He has the loan of a country house in the neighbourhood of Penzance,” Mr. Moore supplied. He ran his fingers through his greying locks distractedly. “But they intended to reach no further than London today, and were to spend an interval in Town, I believe. All the more reason to hold the inquest quietly in their absence.”

“You cannot be serious , Moore,” Edward retorted in exasperation. “It will not fadge, and you know it. I am First Magistrate for this neighbourhood; I regard my charge as a sacred one; I should never shut my eyes to certain truths, merely because they invite scandal for one or another of my acquaintance. Curzon Fiske was once a respectable member of Kentish society—and you would hush up his death as tho’ he were a convict, shot while escaping from Newgate! You must be mad to think I should agree to such terms, merely from considerations of Mrs. MacCallister’s reputation! If she married MacCallister while Fiske yet lived, she undoubtedly did so in error—and the ill may be immediately remedied, with a quiet service performed this very evening at Chilham. You must see the sense of that—and I am persuaded you will regret your scheme, once your mind has grown cool.”

“And I am persuaded that you will long regret this morning’s work, Edward, when events have destroyed much more than Curzon Fiske!” The clergyman struggled for mastery of his temper; appeared on the point of speaking further; then wheeled and strode in fury from the room.

My brother and I stared at one another in consternation.

“Well, well.” Edward sighed. “I cannot think that marrying George Moore was the wisest thing poor Harriot has ever done.”

“We must not judge him by this morning’s events.”

“I beg your pardon, Jane, but I judge the fellow on a host of events, witnessed over a period of some years,” my brother retorted bitterly. He paused in contemplation a moment, and I was reminded of nothing so much as my late father, when wrestling with a spiritual question of no small doctrinal importance. I had never thought Edward very like dear Papa before—Henry has more of my father’s humour in him; but there is as much Religion, I must suppose, in the conduct of Law as there is in the salvation of men’s souls.

Edward’s eyes met mine. “Tho’ I hate to do it, I suppose I must send an Express after the MacCallisters, Jane—and tear them from their happy dream as soon as may be.”

“Ought not the message to come from Mr. James Wildman’s hand?” I suggested gently. “He is, after all, Mrs. MacCallister’s cousin. Better that he should break the unhappy truth, than that she should learn it from a complete stranger.”

“You have the right of it, Jane, as always,” Edward said gratefully. “I shall roust Wildman from the billiard room straight away, and set him down with pen and paper.”

“I wonder that Mr. Wildman himself did not recognise Curzon Fiske,” I said thoughtfully. “For surely he must have known him well, in better days.”

“Nobody thinks to recognise a dead man,” my brother said simply, and quitted the room.

There was a bustle above-stairs; I suspected the coroner was arrived. And so, with one last glance for the silent figure laid out on the trestle table, I closed the scullery door behind me and ascended to the Great Hall.

21 October 1813, Cont.

Dr. Hamish Bredloe is a scotsman, who learnt his profession in Edinburgh—a very knowledgeable centre of learning, I believe, in matters of natural philosophy. Having established an excellent practice as a physician in London some decades since, he had lately retired to the wealthy environs of Canterbury, and had been burdened with the office of coroner at his own request. At a time in life when a man might be expected to cultivate peace, and bask in the glow of honours accumulated through long years’ acquaintance with the Great, Dr. Bredloe had discovered a restlessness and boredom that might soon have killed him, had he not devoted his energies to the determination of Manners of Death, and the inveighing against Misadventure, Malice Aforethought, and Person or Persons Unknown. An interest in the sordid and the low may not have won him numerous invitations to dine among the great houses of Kent; but it had rendered him invaluable to gentlemen like Edward—who were charged with the maintenance of justice, and took that charge in all seriousness. Edward regarded Dr. Bredloe as a man possessed of the keenest understanding, and one whose good opinion he would not lightly foreswear. Hence his utter abhorrence of Mr. Moore’s proposals, regarding a conspiracy of silence; Edward should never attempt to suborn the coroner, as he must undoubtedly have done had he acceded to the clergyman’s scheme.

Mr. Moore was not to be discovered above-stairs, and had perhaps sought reflection in his wife’s company, or in guiding his young son through a lesson in Greek, as I had observed he was wont to do when the desire for mastery was firmly upon him. Edward was able, therefore, to conduct Dr. Bredloe to the body at once—explaining, as he did so, the curious circumstance of the gentleman’s identity.

Beyond curtseying at Dr. Bredloe’s observance, and bridling a little under his sharp glance, I did not hover in the coroner’s vicinity. He would undoubtedly wish to disrobe the corpse, and there could be no cause for my observance of such an examination; I was content to learn the doctor’s conclusions once he had regained Edward’s book room, and was established over a glass of Madeira.

In the meantime, I sought out my niece Fanny.

I found her standing distractedly in the little saloon at the rear of the house, arranging a posy of late summer flowers that must have come from a succession-house, for none of Godmersham’s blooms had survived the relentless chill rains.

“Aren’t they lovely, Aunt?” she murmured, her cheeks aflame. “Mr. Thane has been so kind as to send them from Chilham. He knows nothing of our sad business here—reflects only on the gaieties of last evening, poor fellow! What a shock it shall be to him, when he hears!”