Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

“I suppose he might have killed Miss Twining between three and eight, with no one the wiser,” I said thoughtfully, “but how was the deed effected? Is Mr. Davies to be relied upon?”

“I daresay Davies would sell his own mother to get Byron off,” Swithin confided. “They’ve been friends for ages.”

“Would he, indeed?” Desdemona turned on her husband swiftly. “Even in a matter of murder? This is not a debt of honour Davies stands security for, Charles!—None of your vowels offered over the faro table at White’s! Even so frippery a fellow as Scrope must apprehend the gravity of the case.”

“More reason to stand buff, if his friend is in danger of hanging—”

“I do not understand,” Mona said petulantly, “why Byron should be suspected at all . It is distinctly tiresome! Simply because the corpse lay in a room he once inhabited!”

“The mere fact of Miss Twining having been killed outside that room must materially lessen Byron’s security,” I said. “His lordship’s assertion that he quitted the Arms at such-and-such an hour, and Mr. Davies’s statement that his friend spent the whole of the night in his lodgings, are worth little, given that Miss Twining did not die in Byron’s room at the Arms— she was only found there, much later . It might as well have been Lord Byron, as anybody, who drowned her and left her body in his bed for safekeeping.”

“But it is all absurd, from beginning to end!” Desdemona protested. “Why should Byron kill Catherine Twining? He was passionately attached to her! Moreover, how could he possibly have carried that dripping hammock upstairs, under the eyes of the whole publick house, in the middle of the night? Do you not think it appears as tho’ the murderer— whoever he might be—hated Lord Byron, and meant for suspicion to turn upon him?”

“That is what the jury believed,” Henry said.

“But not the magistrate,” Swithin countered. “Absent Byron, all of Brighton is subject to suspicion—and when presented with such a bewildering array, Old HardCross is sure to take comfort in the obvious. He shall prefer to arrest the one man he may name.”

Being too well acquainted with the limited understanding and general indolence of the magistracy, who are appointed more for their connexions than their zeal, I could not find it in me to argue with the Earl. Moreover, I saw a certain cunning in the very implausibility of Byron’s guilt—a cunning of which I suspected him perfectly capable.

“By ostentatiously paying his shot and quitting the King’s Arms at an unlikely hour,” I mused, “his lordship may have deliberately established his absence in the eyes of all observers, precisely to avail himself of those same rooms only hours later. He may depend upon the world exclaiming: ‘Byron was long gone when the girl was killed! Byron should never place his victim in his own bed!’ He may be clever enough to incriminate himself, if I may so express it, in order to convince us all of his innocence.”

There was a pause as the whole party digested this bit of reasoning. Then Mona said, “What a terrible and penetrating mind you own, my dear Jane. I should not like to live too long with such thoughts as yours; they cannot be comfortable. But you have not heard the most diverting thing of all—I have had it from almost every lip in town, tho’ none were present at the panel—how swiftly a delicious on-dit does fly about, to be sure! You will never guess who forced an entry to the inquest!”

“Lady Oxford?”

“She is not yet arrived, else I am certain she should be impatient to meet with you—I have assured her of your good offices on Byron’s behalf.”

“But, Mona—!” I cried, shocked; never had I said my slightest office was devoted to his lordship.

“You have agreed to discover the truth,” she said, shrugging; “and while we may be aware that the truth could run counter to Byron’s interests—Lady Oxford need not know it. It was Caro Lamb who descended upon Mr. Frogmore and Sir Harding!—Dressed in cloth-of-gold, for all the world like Lady Macbeth, excepting only a bloody blade raised high above her head. I am sure she may have been walking in her sleep, or in the grip of a fit at the very least—by all accounts, her looks bordered on the deranged.”

“I had it from Scrope Davies himself,” Henry said with a grin, “at Raggett’s Club not an hour since, that Byron nearly tore his hair when her ladyship invaded the inquest—thrusting back the door with an audible clang, pacing ceremoniously down the aisle between the chairs, calling out in agitation to Mr. Frogmore that she must be heard, for tho’ he would not stay even to save her from the sea, she would not wish Genius to perish under the heel of the rabble. ”

“Good God,” I murmured.

“Byron, I’m told, called her ladyship a carrion bird not content with hounding him to death, but that she must come and feast upon his bones. He was on the point of quitting the inquest entirely, which should have been most improper and prejudicial to the jury’s judgement, had friend Scrope not constrained him.”

“And Lady Caroline?” I asked eagerly. “Did she explain her excessive interest in Catherine Twining?”

Mona’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned towards us all conspiratorially. “Caro would have it she wished to warn the dear child against Lord Byron—that his lordship was mad, bad, and dangerous to know , as she put it. You may imagine the sensation her words produced!”

“I wonder he was not taken in charge immediately!” I observed. “But did Lady Caroline state at what hour Miss Twining arrived at the Pavilion?”

“She could not be certain—never looks at clocks—does not keep a timepiece by her—thought it was close to one o’clock, but should never swear to the hour—and in general, suggested such ennui at the question that one wonders how she kept from falling into a doze—or so my sources assure me. As to the manner of Miss Twining’s departure—I am told that Lady Caroline was shockingly vague. She supposed the girl was shown out by a footman. She supposed a chair was found for her. At that juncture a lackey from the stables stood up to claim that he had seen a young lady, dark-haired and dressed in white muslin, hastening towards the Steyne alone, in the middle of the night. He could not immediately swear to the time, but when urged by the coroner to consider the matter, thought it was perhaps a few minutes after the Regent’s great stable clock chimed the three-quarter-hour.”

“And Byron reached his friend Davies’s house, in the company of two witnesses—the selfsame friend and a valet—at a quarter to two,” I observed. “They must have just missed Catherine Twining on the paving!”

“But you forget, Miss Austen,” the Earl interjected. “Whatever may have been her intention of crossing the Steyne, she did not meet her death there. Something—or someone— persuaded her to turn back towards the shingle, where she was undoubtedly drowned.”

I had a sudden idea of Catherine in the night—weary, bewildered, and quite alone—catching sight of the gentleman she most feared, Lord Byron, striding along the paving opposite the Steyne. And cowering back into the shadows of the Marine Pavilion’s grounds, from a dread of meeting him at such an hour …

“What do you make of Lady Caroline’s behaviour?” Henry asked curiously.

Mona shrugged. “Not even the murder of an acquaintance, it would seem, may penetrate her absorption in herself . She is the most selfish creature ever born, you know; the entire world might suffer violent death, and she should go on existing in one of her fevered dreams.”