Lynn Shepherd - Murder at Mansfield Park

Mary’s heart leapt in hope — and as soon froze, as the girl sprang up suddenly in the bed, her lips white, and her eyes staring sightlessly across the room. "Do not look upon me! — I will not tell — a secret — always, always a secret! — Edmund — Edmund !"

Charles Maddox was, at that moment, standing in silence on the garden terrace. He was not a man who required many hours of repose, and it had become his habit to spend much of the night watching, taking the advantage of peace and serenity to marshal his thoughts. Living as he did in the smoke and dirt of town, he could but rarely, as now, enjoy a moonlit landscape, and the contrast of a clear dark sky with the deep shade of woods. He gazed for a while at the constellations, picking out Arcturus and the Bear, as he had been taught as a boy, while reflecting that moonlight had practical as well as picturesque qualities: a messenger could ride all night in such conditions as this, and that being so, Maddox might, with luck, receive the information he required in the course of the following day. He had sent Fraser to London, to enquire at Portman-square as to the exact state of affairs between Mr and Mrs Crawford during their brief honeymoon; the husband had claimed they were happy, but every circumstance argued against it. Maddox had seen the clenched fist, the contracted brow, and the barely suppressed anger writ across his face. He would not be the first man Maddox had known, to conceal violent inclinations beneath a debonair and amiable demeanour, and this one had a motive as good as any of them: not love, or revenge, but money, and a great deal of it.

Maddox could not have told, precisely, how long he had been standing there, meditating the histories of his past cases, when he heard the sound of an approaching horse, the echo magnified unduly in the stillness of the air. He abandoned his reverie at once, and proceeded to the front of the house, to find a man dismounting in some haste. He was a medical gentleman, to judge by his bag, but he was not the physician Maddox had seen at Mansfield before.

"Do I take it Mr Gilbert is unavailable?" he asked.

The man looked at him with suspicion, as if wondering at his impertinence. "I am sorry, sir. I do not recollect that we have been introduced."

"My apologies. My name is Charles Maddox. The family have requested my assistance in resolving the unfortunate business of Mrs — that is — Miss Price’s death."

The man nodded. "I had heard as much in the village; indeed, they are talking of little else. I am Phillips, the apothecary. Mr Gilbert has been detained at a lying-in at Locking Hall. He sent word to me to attend here in his stead."

"The patient is worse, I apprehend?" said Maddox.

"Indeed so, sir," said Phillips. "I must hasten to examine her. A great deal of time has already been lost."

He handed his mount to the stable-boy, and began to hurry towards the house, but Maddox kept pace with him.

"Have you been informed as to the symptoms?"

"Of course. The message was most precise, though I do not see that it is any concern of yours."

"Nonetheless, if you would."

"Very well," said Phillips, stopping for a moment before the door, his gloves in one hand. "The pupils are contracted, the patient flushed about the face, the respiration raucous, and the pulse slow. Now if you will excuse me, I am expected."

Maddox caught his arm; his face had assumed a sudden and uncharacteristic gravity. "Will you permit me to accompany you, Mr Phillips?" he said, quickly. "It may prove to be of the utmost importance."

The apothecary hesitated a moment, and Maddox made a shrewd guess that he was only too conscious of his subordinate and substitutionary status at the Park, and would, in consequence, lack the confidence to refuse such a request, or to question the authority of a man who appeared to enjoy the full confidence of Sir Thomas, and to be residing in his house.

"Very well," he said at last. "Follow me."

Had Maddox known no better, he might have presumed that it was Mrs Baddeley Mr Phillips had been summoned to attend. She it was, at first sight, who appeared to be most in need of medicinal assistance; her face was pale, and she had sunk breathless into a chair, one hand at her side, and her aromatic vinegar in the other. Miss Crawford, he could see, was divided between her desire to alleviate the housekeeper’s immediate distress, and a more painful concern for Julia Bertram, who seemed to be in a state of profound stupor. More alarming still, the young girl’s countenance was dark with suffused blood, and her features utterly still and seemingly lifeless.

"How long has this present condition persisted?" asked Phillips, forestalling Maddox’s own enquiry.

"An hour — perhaps two," replied Miss Crawford. "Immediately prior to that she became suddenly agitated and distressed — she began to talk for the first time in days. But," she faltered, her cheeks flushed, "there was no sense in the words. Since that time I have watched her sink into the pitiful state in which you now see her. I have given her two further doses of the cordial Mr Gilbert prescribed, but it seems only to make her worse."

Maddox noted her countenance as she spoke these words, just as he had noted her start back with a frown at his approach; he wondered at it, but he had not then the time to ponder its meaning. To his eyes, it was evident, only too evident, what afflicted the patient, and he watched Phillips commence a prolonged physical examination with increasing impatience, succeeding in checking his anger only by reminding himself that the symptoms were, indeed, easily mistaken for those of common fever, and the alternative was hardly likely to have formed part of the experience of a country apothecary.

"She has been poisoned, man," he cried at last. "Can you not see that? She shews all the signs of having ingested an excessive — indeed fatal — dose of laudanum. The initial excitement under the effects of the stimulant, and then the slow lethargy — the strident breathing — the dreadful colour of the face."

"I beg your pardon, Mr Maddox," said Phillips. "I did not know you included a medical proficiency among your many other accomplishments."

"I do not, sir. But I have had considerable experience of unnatural death, and the means by which it may be brought about. I have, alas, seen cases like this before. If I am right, we will soon see her succumb to an even deeper lassitude, and her breath and pulse will slow to the point of absolute torpor. If we do not act at once, this deadly listlessness will become irreversible; she will sink lower and lower, and we will not be able to bring her back."

All the time he was speaking he had kept his eyes fixed on Mary Crawford’s face, and had seen the grief and horror his words occasioned; he saw, too, that if she did not like him, she did, at least, believe him, and her first action, when he had concluded, was to turn at once to Phillips, and beg him with passionate ardour to comply with whatever he suggested. Mr Phillips, however, was extremely reluctant to cede the right to determine the correct mode of treatment to someone completely unqualified to pronounce in such cases. Nor, it seemed, did he agree with the diagnosis.

"I cannot concur with you, sir," he said, coldly. "I attended the young lady some days ago, at the onset of her present indisposition. I am of the decided opinion that this is merely a particularly virulent case of putrid fever. I propose to bleed her, in order to suppress the fever in its forming state, and relieve the vascular congestion. I have complete confidence in the efficacy of this method of proceeding, as I do of Mr Gilbert’s agreement with what I propose."

"It seems to me, sir," retorted Maddox, "that you are more afraid of deviating from Mr Gilbert’s opinion, than you are of losing your patient. Bleeding will not help her now — indeed, it is very like to kill her, in the weakened state to which she is now reduced.We must apply a purge, and hope to expel the poison from the gut before it can be absorbed into the body. There is no time to lose — we do not even know when the fatal dose was administered. It may already be too late."