Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Stillroom Maid

“It is unfortunate that Miss Austen should have found the body, Cooper,” Sir James went on, “but there is nothing for it. Her testimony must be invaluable. I could wish Miss Austen greater felicity in the nature of her victim, but there again, we are but sport for circumstance.”

“You know something of the girl’s history?” I asked him curiously. “Pray divulge it, if you will.”

“There are few in Bakewell who can be ignorant of her character. Tess Arnold was the subject of considerable gossip, you understand. She was not entirely a respectable creature. And there are some who would have it she was a witch.”

“A witch?” I was startled. “Surely not!”

“Mr. Cooper might be the soundest judge of such matters,” returned Sir James with a pleasing deference for my cousin. “I cannot pretend to a spiritual court; my powers are purely temporal.”

“But whence arises such a charge?” I enquired. “Surely the people of Bakewell are not so simple as to believe a serving girl possessed of the Devil.”

“She was, after all, a stillroom maid.”

“Which tells me nothing more than that she was an adept at the preservation of peaches,” I retorted peevishly. “There is nothing very wonderful in this.”

“An adept, too, at the compounding of simple medicines,” Sir James supplied. “Tess Arnold was reputed to know everything about healing the sick. There are some who claim that she had mastered still greater arts — that she sold charms for lovers, and curses for enemies; that she could blight crops and cause sheep to drop their lambs stillborn. The power of her look would sap the strength from a man, so the women of Bakewell say.”

“And now they would have it that she died at the Devil’s hand,” I concluded. “Is that the sum of the tale? That an incubus destroyed Tess Arnold on the rock?”

In the flickering light of the lamps, I saw my cousin’s eyes, wide and grave; and then he crossed himself once against the Evil Eye.

“Incubus or Freemason — such things have been rumoured in country towns before this,” Sir James observed. “It is far more comfortable to throw the guilt upon mysteries one cannot understand, than upon a human being disturbingly like oneself.”

I threw up my hands in exasperation. “There is another force at work in country towns, Sir James — a force of greater power than witchcraft, and certainly as deadly: jealousy, and the malice that it will breed. You said, I think, that Tess Arnold was not considered respectable. Is that because the people of Bakewell believed her a witch? Or because she was a woman of easy virtue?”

My cousin Mr. Cooper uttered a scandalised snort. “Remember where you are, Jane, and do not run on in the wild way you are suffered to do at home!” he cried.

Sir James appeared not to have heard his injunction. “You are anxious to defend her, though totally unknown to you before,” he observed.

“Recollect that I saw her face,” I told him. “When I believed it to be a man’s, I was struck by the delicacy of feature; now that I know it to have belonged to a woman, I can comprehend the envy it might arouse.”

“She was reported to be liberal in the granting of her favours,” Sir James conceded, “although in that instance, too, a jealous tongue may do much with little matter.”

“She was foully and cruelly murdered, and she cannot have been more than five-and-twenty! How is such a creature to possess the depth of art you would describe?”

He said nothing for a moment; and then, setting down his glass, he shook his head. “I should be the last to deny the evil weight of a jealous tongue, Miss Austen. But it is my experience that few women of any age or social station end as Tess Arnold did. And that must give one pause. Her death was achieved in a kind of fury, as though the gods themselves had spread her bowels upon the rock.”

To Find if a Body Be Dead or Not

Stick a needle an inch or so into the corpus. If it is alive, the needle will become tarnished whilst in the truly dead the needle will retain its polish.

— From the Stillroom Book

of Tess Arnold,

Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire , 1802–1806

Wednesday

27 August 1806

“I THINK, MR. COOPER,” I SAID WHEN WE HAD ALL ASSEMBLED in the parlour for breakfast this morning, “that our first object should be to pay a call upon your friend Mr. Hemming.”

My cousin looked up from his buttered toast in astonishment. “Upon George? I am sure that he is hard at work, Cousin, in his solicitor’s offices. However much Mr. Hemming may look the gentleman, he is not entirely at leisure. His time is not his own to command, but must await the pleasure of his clients, upon whom his sustenance depends. We shall certainly not find him at home.”

“Very well,” I replied, “then let us seek him at his place of business if we must. It is imperative, I think, that we discover what Mr. Hemming truly knows of the maid Tess Arnold. The Inquest cannot hope to be a pleasant affair in any case—”

“I am sure you love nothing better than a Coroner’s panel, Jane,” my mother objected.

“—but if we appear in ignorance of your friend’s purpose, in concealing from us the truth of the maid’s identity when he must surely have known it, we shall feel ourselves the objects of a very poor joke, indeed.”

Mr. Cooper set down his teacup with a clatter of crockery. “You cannot really intend to make such a display of yourself, Cousin, as to appear before Mr. Tivey at the Snake and Hind tomorrow morning!”

“My dear Mr. Cooper,” I replied, “can you really know so little of the English system of justice, as to believe I am offered any choice?”

GEORGE HEMMING KEEPS HIS OFFICES IN CARDING Street, less than half a mile from The Rutland Arms; and it was (hither we repaired after breakfast. My mother declined the errand, but Cassandra consented to make a third of the party, the day being very fine, and our time in Bakewell all too short.

“Do you really intend to quit this place on Friday?” she enquired of our cousin. “I suppose you must believe your admirable wife sorely in want of you. I must own that were I to consult only myself, I should prolong the visit — I have not seen a tenth of the region’s beauties! Not a standing stone nor a cavern have we explored, Jane! And how I long to open my sketchbook before a chasm or a torrent, and attempt to seize them in crayons!”

“My dear cousin — we cannot throw off the dust of Derbyshire too soon,” Mr. Cooper replied indignantly. “I shudder to think what Sir George Mumps should say, did he know of our entanglement in this dreadful affair; and he shall know of it very soon, for I related the whole to my dearest Caroline, and she will feel herself obliged to publish the intelligence throughout Hamstall Ridware. It must make a very great piece of news, indeed. I daresay she will be asked to dine on the strength of it.”

Being momentarily torn between the most sublime gratification, at the thought of himself as the object of general admiration and pity within his parish — and the gravest anxiety for his noble patron’s good opinion — my cousin very nearly lost his way. I steered him gently back from the turning into Water Street, and said, “Just here, Mr. Cooper, I believe we shall find Mr. Hemming.”

A painted sign in a prosperous shade of bottle green announced the premises to all of Derbyshire: George Hemming Esquire, Solicitor at the Bar . Mr. Cooper begged us to precede him onto the doorstep, then did the honour of the brass doorknocker; it made a hollow, echoing sound, as though the offices burrowed deep.