Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

She looked at me sidelong. “And do you intend to walk all the way to Chilham Castle?”

“Not if I discover what I hope to find, before we reach it,” I returned calmly.

“Lord! Are we hunting for clews, then?” Jupiter chortled. “It makes a dashed good change from billiards, I assure you. Only tell me what you seek, ma’am, and I shall train my full attention on the ground!”

“I am hoping the dog may nose out something for us,” I said as Frisk’s waving brush disappeared into the under-growth at one side of the path. “A piece of cloth, perhaps, torn from a cloak; a few strands of horsehair pulled from a passing mount.”

“But surely any idle walker might leave such things behind him, Aunt,” Fanny said in puzzlement, “without them being decidedly a token of Fiske’s murderer.”

She is hardly lacking in sense, our Fanny; but I adopted an airy tone.

“To be sure, my dear. But it is equally possible we may discover something decisive. ”

“Such as … another pistol, tossed into the bracken, that does not belong to James Wildman at all,” Jupiter suggested.

I studied his indolent countenance, so deceptive in its blandness. So the pistol had been troubling Mr. Finch-Hatton too. Perhaps our conversation in the breakfast-parlour yesterday had given him to think.

The pleasure gardens behind the house gave way to a walled kitchen garden, which amply supplied the Godmersham table three-quarters of the year; and I might have lingered there on a different morning, to indulge a few melancholy thoughts on the relentless march of Time, amidst the leafless espaliered fruit trees. This morning, however, mindful of the impending rain—is there any season so wet as Autumn in Kent?—I trod purposefully forward, Fanny keeping pace beside me, with Mr. Finch-Hatton at her elbow. He whistled a little tunelessly under his breath as he strode along, slashing at the dead grasses with his ebony stick.

“I have been considering of James Wildman’s pistol,” I mused as the ground began its gradual ascent and our pleasant saunter became an uphill toil. Below us, Edward’s sheep dotted the grass like so much cloud come to ground. “If we are agreed—as I believe we must be—that Adelaide MacCallister is the last person who should have wished to incriminate her cousin, we must endeavour to put our heads together, Mr. Finch-Hatton, and discover who did . You know the gentleman far better than I, or even Fanny—what is your opinion on the subject? Does Mr. Wildman attract enemies, as a jam-pot attracts bees?”

“James?” Jupiter replied incredulously. “Attract enemies ? I should say not! James , who was never an Out-and-Outer, nor Top-’o-the-Trees, much less a Rake-shame or a Loose Screw! No, no—he’s far too good ton for anyone to come the ugly with James!”

“In other words—if I apprehend your cant correctly—Mr. Wildman’s character and way of life are far too unobjectionable to excite either the envy or the hatred that a nonpareil of Fashion, or a reprehensible scoundrel, should certainly inspire.”

“That’s it,” Jupiter said gratefully. “Hasn’t an enemy in the world, our James.”

“And yet, someone deliberately left his pistol at a scene of murder. How is it that a man without enemies is positioned so neatly for the scaffold, Mr. Finch-Hatton?”

Fanny snorted, an indecorous sound that might have been a swallowed giggle. Tho’ she was the sort who spoke most often only when she was spoken to—particularly among gentlemen, whom she had been trained foolishly to regard as leaders to be followed, rather than small boys to be led—she did appreciate a deft exchange of views, and the occasional triumph of her aunt.

“Does leave one in a coil, don’t it?” Jupiter agreed affably. “Nasty, slippery articles, facts.”

“I believe the coil might be cut, however, did we consider of the relations between Curzon Fiske and James Wildman,” I suggested. “Mr. Wildman insists he was in happy ignorance of Fiske’s survival, when that unfortunate man found his way to Chilham last Wednesday; and as Fiske was unknown in England for fully three years—we must cast our minds back to that fatal night, when James Wildman admits to having last seen Fiske: The night the gentleman was forced to flee the Kingdom. There was a game of whist played that evening, I believe? For odiously high stakes? And you were present, were you not, Mr. Finch-Hatton?”

Jupiter stopped short on the path. He studied me through narrowed eyes. “I was,” he said tersely, “but if you may tell me how you got wind of such a devilish affair, I’d be much obliged to you, ma’am. I should like to have it out with the bounder who saw fit to share what should never have reached a lady’s ears!”

“It was Fanny who told me of it,” I replied.

“Aunt Jane!” Fanny cried in outrage.

“Do not attempt to deny it! We must disabuse Mr. Finch-Hatton of his misapprehension, my dear—that the whist game is in some wise a closely-guarded secret—for if you know of it, Fanny, we may be assured that most of Kent does, as well.”

“Damme,” Jupiter muttered, and lopped a thistle from its stalk with a single murderous stroke of his cane.

As we laboured up the pitch of the downs, and the weak Autumn light was gradually blotted out by cloud, I succeeded in dragging intelligence most unwillingly from Jupiter’s disapproving mind. To relate the essentials of what he termed “a dashed smoky business” to two unmarried ladies obviously offended his notions of decorum. The discovery that he actually possessed such nice sensibilities so raised Jupiter in Fanny’s estimation, that by the end of his recital the two were conversing quite animatedly.

“We were all at Chilham Castle for a visit that November, one of James’s sisters—never can tell one from the other—being on the point of coming out , and the Wildmans thinking to show her off round Kent before the London Season began, just to see how the chit took. Neither of ’em ever did take, come to that,” Jupiter added thoughtfully, “but can’t blame James’s mamma for trying! I mean to say—two such antidotes on her hands, and the eldest of ’em past praying for! In any event, there was a dress party. —Believe you were indisposed, Miss Fanny. Accounts for you not being one of the party.”

“All the children had scarlet fever,” my niece murmured, “and naturally I could not carry contagion into Louisa’s coming-out party.”

“We’d just dined—twenty couple or so, m’mother and sister and m’father in attendance, along with the Moores and the Plumptres and I know not who else—”

“Mr. Lushington and his wife, perhaps?” I prompted.

“Aye,” Jupiter said darkly, “and that chit of theirs, Mary-Ann, who’s forever setting her cap at James, for all she’s not yet fifteen.”

“Is she, indeed?” Fanny enquired with interest. “I had thought her still in the schoolroom!”

“Ought to have been, that night—what Lushington was thinking, bringing a child no more than twelve to dinner, I should have liked to have asked him—but that’s neither here nor there.” Jupiter stabbed his stick into the soft earth with every step. “As I say, we were coming out of the dining parlour, intending to get up a bit of a dance—you know the sort of thing, Fanny, most informal and dashed tedious, my opinion, but nothing for it—girl’s coming-out party, after all—when there was a great pounding at the front door, and the peal of the bell, and that quiz they keep for a butler at Chilham—”

“Twitch.”

“—the very one!—threw open the front door. There was Fiske and little Adelaide, looking as tho’ she might faint at our feet, and practically stumbling to get inside. ‘Oh, cousin!’ she cried to James’s papa, ‘the bailiffs are at the door, and we are lost, and if you are not kind to us, cousin, I do not know what we shall do!’ Never seen a lady so torn with anxiety as Adelaide was that night—and her increasing, worse luck.”