Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Barque of Frailty

Would that my novel were all that occupied my heart in the interval!

“You are very good, Henry.” I kissed his cheek as I rose from the table. My brother clasped my hand a moment in his before releasing it.

“I need not say how much your presence at such a time must gratify me, Jane. I cannot like leaving Eliza alone when she is in such a case.”

A tremor of guilt suffused me. “You would mean … her cold? But it is very trifling.”

He thrust his chair from the table. “She is hardly as young as she once was. Her indispositions of late have only increased, no matter how many remedies she seeks for them. I will not scruple to disclose that our removal to this house in Sloane Street was due in part to a desire for a more salubrious neighbourhood. The air in Hans Town is very fresh — it might almost remind one of the country.”

“Indeed it might. And now that May is upon us—”

“You do not find Eliza much altered?” my brother demanded. “I tell myself it is only the ravages of the winter, but her health has always been indifferent, Jane — you know her for a most delicate creature.”

I perceived that this trouble had been growing upon him, in the quiet evenings of early dusk, through December and January; such is the fate of a man who marries a lady ten years his senior, to be staring always at the prospect of a grave.

“Nonsense,” I said. “Eliza is very stout. And I am here to nurse her, with mustard plasters and flannel if necessary. Go to Oxford.”

When he would have smiled, and turned for his library door, I added swiftly, “But make my introduction to Lord Moira first, I beg!”

“Is it so important?” The satiric twinkle of my Henry of old was returned once more to his eyes. “I might almost believe you in fear for your life, Jane— so ardent is your desire for instruction in politics! We might look for Lord Moira to attend the inquest into Tscholikova’s death on the morrow. Most of the Upper Ten Thousand [13] The Upper Ten Thousand were the aristocracy of England; the haut ton. — Editor’s note . will have squeezed into the publican’s rooms before nine o’clock has tolled.”

“Then I shall certainly accompany you,” I said swiftly, and bid him goodnight.

I confess I was relieved to learn that my brother would be absent for the better part of next week; I had too much to accomplish in those swiftly declining days, and too little guile to manage the business without a full confession. I might expect Eliza to emerge from her sickroom the very moment her husband’s hired mare had clattered away from Sloane Street; we would all of us move in greater ease once the ignorant were absent from the house.

For my part, I employed a quarter-hour in writing a brief missive to Sylvester Chizzlewit, Esquire, before snuffing out my candle. It should be sent round to the solicitor’s chambers no later than eight o’clock in the morning, with a discreetly-worded plea for his attendance upon me in Sloane Street. I foresaw the need of a gentleman in the coming days — one with an acute and subtle mind — and my brief acquaintance with the Chizzlewit family assured me that the youngest scion should possess such qualities.

As for the inquest itself — I had no fear of being called as witness by the coroner, to account for my dubious brokering of a dead woman’s jewels. Bill Skroggs had assured me that the magistrate would permit no mention of the curious theft to be introduced at the proceedings. Death alone was the panel’s province; Lord Castlereagh’s subtle investigations into a murder were a matter of stealth, to be conducted in the shadows.

THE BOW STREET MAGISTRATE’S OFFICE SITS DIrectly opposite the Theatre Royal, where Monday evening I had obtained my sole glimpse of Princess Tscholikova in life. It is also aptly located hard by a publick house: the Brown Bear, capably run by one Steptoe Harding. On these premises the Runners are wont to rest their weary limbs at the close of the day, and trade tales of the ardours of crime, under the influence of a can of ale or a measure of Blue Ruin. This morning, however, as Henry and I made our way towards Covent Garden, the narrow passage of Bow Street was clogged with carriage traffick that all but prohibited entry to the Bear. It was as my brother had predicted: the cream of London Society had come to learn why a Russian princess had breathed her last on Lord Castlereagh’s doorstep.

It was but half-past eight o’clock in the morning, and the inquest was not to be opened until the hour of ten; yet already seats were claimed towards the front of the publican’s main taproom, and the knot of persons by the door was five deep, all of them discoursing at the top of their lungs on every subject from movements in the Peninsula to a nobleman’s losses in one of the more fashionable gambling hells. Most of the interested parties were gentlemen: some of their faces I recognised. None were of Henry’s intimate circle — indeed, these were the Great of London Society: Lord Alvanley, who was extremely wealthy and deplorably intimate with the Prince Regent; Earl Grey, who might hope to lead a government in time, if the Regent deigned to remember his Whiggish friends; Henry, Lord Holland — another Whig, but one for whom I held an indescribable fondness, as having been the object of Lord Harold Trowbridge’s trust and esteem for thirty years at least. I have no acquaintance with Lord Holland or his fashionable lady; I shall never dine among the twenty or thirty Select who are summoned nightly to take potluck at Holland House; but I shall always bear him a depth of affection, for having supported Lord Harold in his darkest days.

The scene should have been offensive, were it not so benignly familiar: a crowd of elegant clubmen conversing at their ease in the Brown Bear, while beyond the door of the publick room, the body of Princess Tscholikova must even then await the scrutiny of the coroner’s panel: blue and cold, her neck ravaged by a knife or a razor, the remains already giving off a putrid smell at the passage of four days’ time. I felt a wild impulse to go to her — to protect this unknown woman from the callous riot of hunting and pugilism, on-dits and cockfights, the formation of governments and Perceval’s discomfiture … I thought to look for Earl Moira, in the hope that I might profit from this interval in furthering acquaintance — but as Henry squeezed politely past a gentleman who must, who could only be the ambitious Tory minister, George Canning, I glimpsed the Comte d’Entraigues.

He did not observe me; indeed, I am certain the Comte believed himself ignored. He was standing at Canning’s elbow, like an acolyte or a servant; his hands clasped behind his back, his head humbly bowed. I remembered something Henry had said: that Canning and d’Entraigues were intimate once, until la belle cocotte, Julia Radcliffe, had divided them. It did not appear as tho’ they were divided now.

It was possible the Comte d’Entraigues would offer the cut indirect to so insignificant a person as his despised wife’s acquaintance, regardless of the fact that we had met only two days before in Hyde Park— but as I gazed at his raddled countenance, I perceived that the piercing eyes were studying an image behind me. I turned, and saw the sleek black head of the nobleman who had peered from the carriage window through the rain of yesterday morning: the Russian Prince who must be Tscholikova’s brother.

He wore black, as did all those in his party — two gentlemen and a figure I recognised as the maid Druschka. All four might have been alone in the room, for all the notice they gave the curious. I did not wish to betray a vulgar interest, and looked instead for my brother.

Henry was already surging forward to claim a pair of seats at the middle of the room. He had no reason to find a foreign grandee of particular note; his attention was drawn, rather, to the suddenly paralysed clubmen behind us. They stood as tho’ cast in stone, all their eyes riveted upon a single figure as he paused in the now empty doorway: a tall man, with a pronounced nose and penetrating eyes, and the disordered locks of a fashionable exquisite: Robert, Lord Castlereagh, the dread object of a dead woman’s love.