Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“Such palpitations as you must have suffered! I wonder you did not swoon! Was there a great deal of gore spread all about?”

“Mother!” Charlotte cried reprovingly.

Any plan I might have harboured, of surveying the gentlemen of Chilham on their home ground, was defeated at the start. The men of the house—Old Mr. Wildman, his son James, Captain MacCallister, and Julian Thane—were gone to the inquest in the village two miles distant. As Dr. Bredloe had convened his panel at noon, however, and the hour was now half-past one, we might reasonably expect to see the men soon returned; it was for this reason, no doubt, that Mrs. Thane had remained fixed on the staircase in the Great Hall, in hopes of greeting her son. It was for Fanny and me to entertain the ladies of Chilham during the tedious interval; we might have been delivered to their avid questioning expressly for that purpose; and the mistress of the Castle, at least, was determined to milk every drop of excitement from our threadbare phrases.

“Poor Miss Knight! How you must have felt it!” Mrs. Wildman exclaimed with ready sympathy.

“But she had Jupiter to support her,” Louisa observed with a sidelong glance, “and I am sure there can be nothing so romantickal as for a lady to find herself in such an interesting situation, with such a gentleman!”

“I declare I should swoon regardless, merely for the pleasure of having Mr. Finch-Hatton catch me!” Charlotte added with a tinkle of laughter, as tho’ the small matter of a seventeen-year-old girl with a severed throat was not worth consideration. “Is Jupiter yet at Godmersham, Fanny?”

“He departed for Eastwell this morning,” my niece answered. “My brothers having quitted the house for Oxford, there was nothing to keep Mr. Finch-Hatton longer.”

“Such modesty,” Louisa murmured, with a look for her sister that spoke volumes to my jaundiced eye. The Wildman girls were disposed to see in Fanny a rival. On account of Finch-Hatton, who had been staying at the Castle nearly a week before coming to us—or Julian Thane?

“And what do you think of this shocking business of Adelaide’s?” Mrs. Wildman said in a half-whisper, leaning towards me from her couch as tho’ to shield the ears of the younger girls. “I should not be saying so, when Mr. Knight is our magistrate, and our dearest neighbour these many years—but I confess I believe he must be mistaken! That our Addie should take James’s pistol and shoot her husband—impossible! But Mr. Knight will not believe her! And now this second distressing death—”

I might have seized the opportunity to assure Mrs. Wildman that her cousin should soon be released; I might have pressed her on the interesting question of which among her acquaintance might rejoice in seeing her son James accused of murder; but as I parted my lips to speak, I sneezed.

It was a small sound, discreetly suppressed, but fell upon Mrs. Wildman’s ears as a thunderclap. She surveyed my reddened eyes and nose with keen attention, and started upright as I sneezed again.

“Miss Austen! You are unwell!”

“I was some hours exposed to the rain,” I muttered from behind a square of linen, “the day of Martha’s discovery.”

“But of course! You should not be raised from your bed!”

I sighed lugubriously, and closed my eyes as tho’ deprived of all strength. “I was most unwell yesterday, to be sure, but I could not consider of myself when so much trouble has descended upon this household, ma’am. I insisted that dear Fanny convey me to you as soon as I felt restored enough to rise, for I should never wish to be backwards in any attention to so close a neighbour of my brother’s. I confess, however, that I feel most unwell. Perhaps the drive has proved a danger.”

“You must certainly lie down in one of my bedchambers, Miss Austen, and if you feel equal to it—have a mustard bath to the feet.”

With an energy unexpected in so indolent a creature, Mrs. Wildman hastened to pull the drawing-room bell, and at the ready appearance of a footman, required him to summon her housekeeper.

This excellent woman being already about the task of providing refreshment for the party in the drawing-room, in the form of pears from the Castle’s own garden, a Stilton cheese, and various sweetmeats, the footman did not have far to look—and in a little while I found myself conveyed by Mrs. Twitch (for she was the butler’s wife) to a comfortable bedchamber. There was no sign of the baleful Mrs. Thane on the stairs; perhaps she had given up her vigil, and retired to her rooms. I had an idea of her being lodged in a suite in the Castle’s tower: a remote fastness, where she might prowl by midnight and fret over the fates of her children. None of Chilham’s intimates seemed disposed to seek out her company—nor she, theirs.

I took off my pelisse and bonnet while Mrs. Twitch kindled a fire.

“Indisposed are you, ma’am?”

“A dreadful cold, taken while I waited for the doctor at the scene of the maidservant’s murder,” I said with calm precision.

Mrs. Twitch stared at me penetratingly. “You could not have took ill in better cause, if I may be so bold—for a sweeter girl never lived than Martha Kean, and how the Lord saw fit to serve her as he did—cut down like a lamb to the butcher—” She broke off, and stabbed viciously at the fire, which needed no encouragement to burn.

“How well did you know her?”

“Not so as to say well —she only come to us with Miss Addie, near a month ago. Mrs. MacCallister, I should say. But she was a taking little thing, and a day was as good as a month for knowing Martha. Not for her the high-in-the-instep airs of a lady’s maid —which she was, and learning to be a Dresser. No task was too mean for her to undertake, for she’d grown up in service. Saw the lot of us as in some wise family. ‘Can I carry the linen for you, Mrs. Twitch?’ she’d say, and whisk it out of my hands before I could so much as answer; and was nothing but kindness to Scullery Nan, what hasn’t enough wits for a baby, tho’ she’s full forty year old.”

“Did the other maids befriend her?”

Mrs. Twitch sniffed. “Not they. Jealous . All four of ’em are Kentish born and bred, ma’am, and don’t take easy to foreigners. Talked scandalous about Martha, they did, as having aims above her station—which’ll be due to the letters, no doubt.”

“Letters?” I had a sudden swift thought of Sir Davie Myrrh, summoning the girl to her lonely death with a missive sent by post. Edward’s conjectures might prove correct after all.

“Aye. Martha knew her letters,” Mrs. Twitch said simply. “Martha could read. And write. That’s a rare talent below-stairs, let me tell you. Fair turned the other girls’ noses, the way she was always tucking a bit of paper in her pocket.”

Good Lord. A maidservant who could read. I had been thinking Martha was brought to the Downs in expectation of meeting Julian Thane—an assignation established in a whisper, by a turning in the stairs. But a summons in a note might have been left her by anyone.

“I understand Martha belonged to Wold Hall. The Thanes must be terribly distressed.”

“ He is,” Mrs. Twitch replied succinctly, “Martha having been a playmate of Miss Addie and Mr. Julian when a child, as will happen on a great estate—which is why Miss Addie chose to take the girl with her, as lady’s maid, when she left to marry the Captain. Mr. Julian rode into Canterbury yesterday to break the news to his sister; and that Miss Addie should be forced to shoulder another grief is more than the good Lord ought to allow! But if Mrs . Thane turned a hair at Martha’s loss I’d be fair amazed. That care-for-nobody!”