Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Barque of Frailty

But if Malverley were the Princess’s lover — how, then, to account for the correspondence published in the Morning Post? My limbs burn with the desire to lie once more entangled in your own … There is nothing I would not sacrifice, would not risk … I can hardly write for anguish … It was unlikely the lady should have addressed such phrases to two gentlemen. I must be mistaken. Perhaps the private secretary had seen— and copied — and sold — Lord Castlereagh’s intimate letters for personal gain! Sylvester Chizzlewit had said Malverley was fond of deep play; and thus the young man might have considerable debts of honour that must be satisfied. Had the Princess, shamed before the eyes of the ton, confronted her enemy at his lodgings in the Albany that fateful night — and had Malverley cut her throat?

Why, then, should he have left the body on Castlereagh’s doorstep?

“I cannot make it out at all,” I murmured vexedly. “I require more information.”

“And you shall have it,” Sylvester Chizzlewit said behind me.

I turned, and surveyed the individual he ushered into the room: A man of indeterminate age and weather-beaten appearance, who might have served as Ordinary Seaman on one of my brother’s ships. His stooped shoulders were clad in a patched and faded coat of kerseymere; his trousers were black; and his boots were worn. He nodded deferentially as my eyes swept over him, and turned a round felt hat in heavily-knuckled hands.

“This is Clayton,” Mr. Chizzlewit informed me, “who drives a hackney coach, and is desirous of telling you his story, Miss Austen.”

“Are you the fellow who carried two ladies from Portman Square on Sunday evening?” I enquired eagerly.

Clayton shook his head. “I don’t work Portman Square, miss. That’d be a covey o’ mine named Davy. It was Davy as took you off that night, and when the gentleman come asking his questions, Davy thought o’ me — my story being just as odd, seemingly, as his.”

I looked enquiringly at Mr. Chizzlewit, who gestured towards a chair set at a comfortable distance from the hearth; I sank into it.

“The man Davy did, indeed, convey you and Mrs. Austen from Portman Square to Sloane Street, but he failed to observe anything subsequently but the coins Mrs. Henry pressed into his palm, the night being one without moon, and the vicinity imperfectly lit. He can tell us nothing of the misfortune that befell your sister. In the course of my enquiries among the jarveys, however, I thought to ask whether any man had taken up a fare in Berkeley Place, on the evening of Monday last. I was interested, Miss Austen, in the interval between Princess Tscholikova’s leaving her card at the Castlereaghs’, and the hour in which her corpse was discovered in front of No. 45— a period of some four hours. I had an idea that the lady might have engaged a hackney.”

“Naturally,” I agreed, “it being unlikely she should have walked the streets of London in her evening dress for so long a time.”

“The locale being somewhat infamous, due to the unfortunate death of Princess Tscholikova, I did not have to put my questions very long. Davy — your jarvey — had heard a story of his friend, Clayton, here; and Clayton was very soon introduced to my acquaintance. Pray tell the lady what you saw and heard, Clayton.”

“It did ought to have been brought before the crowner,” Clayton said belligerently, “but that I couldn’t get a place inside the Brown Bear; the house was that full of gentry, an honest man couldn’t set foot over the jamb. I’d have spoke to crowner himself, if I’d found the time — but what with one thing and another, and me not knowing how to find the gentleman, and the press of work — and the panel saying it were self-murder … ”

“You took up a lady in Berkeley Square last Monday night?” I asked.

“Took her up in Covent Garden,” he corrected, “when the play was done at the Royal. Half-past twelve o’clock that would have been, near enough as makes no difference — and her walking the length of Bow Street alone, in search of a hackney. Most of those as goes to the Royal has their own carriages, you see, and the street was that full of them. But I lit on her quick enough — a dimber mort if ever I seen one, and full of juice I reckon.”

By this, I concluded that Clayton regarded the late Princess as attractive enough, and wealthy in appearance; a likely prospect for a fare. “You saw her into the hackney,” I suggested, “and took her … where?”

“Lord Castlereagh’s,” Clayton replied glibly. “She told me to wait. I walk my horse if the party’s longer than ten minutes, naturally. But she weren’t long inside, and the porter handing her back up in my coach, and telling me as I was to take the party to the Albany, Piccadilly.”

“—Where she went in search of Charles Malverley,” I murmured. “Perhaps it was always Malverley who brought her to Berkeley Square in the first place, and not Castlereagh, as we had thought.”

“Eh?” Sylvester Chizzlewit enquired, with a startled air. “Malverley was acquainted with the Princess?”

“Her maid says she was in the habit of visiting him at his lodgings. It was Malverley, no doubt, who was the object of her earnest and steadfast gaze at Castlereagh’s box, during the interval of Macbeth; and the Fashionable World read in her regard a confirmation of scandal — the letters published in the Morning Post. I begin to believe they were always letters written to Malverley — which he sold, and passed off, as his employer’s. Why should he run so high a risk of dismissal, in serving Lord Castlereagh such a brutal trick?”

“Because he bears him no love,” Mr. Chizzlewit answered abruptly. “You will recall that I apprehended as much, when he spoke of his lordship over dinner in my rooms. Malverley’s reserve then was uncharacteristic; and the heat with which he later referred to insults — that he had been asked to do what no man should, even for hire — may suggest a repugnance, a disgust of his employer, that might well have led him to mischief. Did Malverley wish to be rid of Princess Tscholikova, and revenged upon Castlereagh, he found in the lady’s correspondence ample scope for both.”

“Very well,” I said. “We shall accept, for the moment, that he did as you say; and leave aside the motivation for his actions. It is possible, I suppose, that a desire for revenge might lead to murder. But how did the two encounter one another that night? Malverley would have it he remained at Castlereagh’s the whole of the morning.”

“He maintains it without witnesses, however; the coroner’s panel merely relied on his word.”

“True.” I glanced at the jarvey, who stood in respectful silence, comprehending perhaps one word in five of our conversation. “Clayton, what did you then at the Albany?”

“Stood to, as before, while the lady spoke to the porter. I reckon she got no satisfaction from the lad, for she waited in the courtyard a deal o’ time, looking up at the darkened windows. It don’t do for a lady alone to enter the Albany; the porters won’t have it. She gave up after a bit, and mounted into my hackney. That was when we drove to Russell Square.”

“Russell Square!” I cried, astounded. Whatever I had been expecting, it was hardly this. “And the number to which you were sent …?”

“The lady didn’t seem rightly to know. She told me to drive right round the square — alongside of the parts of it that are finished, where people are living— and stop in front of one that had carriages waiting, and torches burning at the entry. All lit up it was, something lovely.”

“Having heard Clayton’s story already, I required him to drive me to Russell Square,” Mr. Chizzlewit put in quietly, “and point out the residence Princess Tscholikova visited. I shall not surprise you, I think, Miss Austen, when I say that it is the house presently leased by Miss Julia Radcliffe.”