Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Genius of the Place

“He did not attempt to converse with you.”

“No,” she agreed, “and that alone convinced me of his guilt. Julian is many things, Miss Austen, but he is not a man who may lie in his looks. I knew that he was afraid to meet me, knowing what I had witnessed; and in this I comprehended the whole of the story.”

“Perhaps he read only indignation in your countenance, and thought to appease you later, when the first anger should have passed. Did he attempt to write a letter?” I enquired ingenuously.

“He may have attempted much,” Miss Sharpe replied, “but any letters I subsequently received, I burned without reading. Perhaps I should have returned them; but I had heard he was gone from The Larches, and did not know the direction at Eastwell. To have enquired it of Mrs. Austen would have appeared too strange.”

“I see.” Much of my supposition regarding the governess was proved correct — all but Mr. Brett's tale of a dark-haired woman departing on horseback from The Larches' stableyard. Could Mr. Brett be believed? Or was the story the merest fabrication? “Were you surprised, Miss Sharpe, to learn that Mr. Sothey was gone to Eastwell?”

“Utterly surprised,” she said in a low voice. “Julian had made no mention of such a removal to me, in his earlier letters — had offered nothing of a new direction, where my correspondence might be sent. In such neglect, Miss Austen, I read a further disregard. It was plain that Julian had tired of me, and wished to be free of all obligation.”

“Never say so, my dearest!”

The words burst forth in a cry of anguish, and in an instant, Julian Sothey was upon us. From whence he had come, drawn by the little scene, I could not at first imagine; but he was dressed as fully as Anne Sharpe, as tho' he, too, had intended a midnight flight. He threw himself upon his knees before the governess and seized her hands.

“You see before you, Anne, a heart now more your own than when you nearly broke it a few days ago! Have you any notion of the agony you have caused — the sleepless nights, the endless calculation, the desperate attempts at communication? All for the merest trifle — a misapprehension — the bitter result of a petulant woman's fury! Can you possibly have believed that I should abandon you, my Anne, for the fiend that was Mrs. Grey?”

Anne Sharpe still sat rigidly upon the bench, as tho' turned to stone by Mr. Sothey's appearance; his words had washed over her as ineffectually as a summer storm. “Please, Julian, I beg of you. Do not make me look a fool. Mrs. Grey should never have presumed to strike you, did she not believe you to be well within her power.”

“Within her power, perhaps,” he replied, “but never what you believe me to have been. Come to your senses, Anne! Is it conceivable I could be other than your own?”

She did not reply, but struggled to free her hands from his; and at that moment, a second voice at our backs alerted all our senses.

“Julian, Julian — must you bring the entire house around our ears?”

I turned, and perceived Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton. He appeared remarkably easy for a man discovered in his host's entry hall at two o'clock in the morning. Tho' his words suggested chagrin, there was an air of amused calculation about his countenance. I judged that he had only just quitted the library; all behind him was dark.

“Good evening, sir.” I contrived to hold my voice steady. “I collect you have been rifling my brother's desk, in a fruitless search for Mrs. Grey's letters. You would have done better to credit him with a degree of honesty you cannot share, when first he informed you that your name was not to be found in their passages.”

“Good evening, Miss Austen,” he replied with a courtly bow. “As you are so familiar with the lady's correspondence, I need not remind you that my friend Sothey's name is everywhere in evidence. It behooved me to ensure that Sothey's connexion with Mrs. Grey, and her dubious undertakings for the Emperor of France, should never come to light.”

“Did you protect him as ardently last Monday, somewhere along the Wingham road?” I retorted.

“If by that question, you would enquire whether I throttled Mrs. Grey, I must answer in the negative. I might offer you my word as a gentleman — but I perceive that you hold me in something like contempt, Miss Austen. More to the point, we are all most abominably situated in this draughty hall. If a full explanation is to be undertaken, I suggest we remove to the library, where we might dispose ourselves in greater comfort.”

“The library?” cried my brother Neddie with considerable indignation. He held aloft a taper, and stared at us all from the library doorway, with undisguised disgust. “Say rather the kitchens! I have been standing fully two hours behind these damnable drapes, and I refuse to remain in that room a moment longer! If your sense of honour requires an explanation, Finch-Hatton, then pray let it be conducted in a civilised manner — over a quantity of bread and butter.”

“I thought you must be concealed behind the drapes,” Mr. Emilious replied companionably. “It was either yourself or a very large rat, that persisted in knocking against the windowpanes whilst we were engaged in rummaging about your desk. Where, by the by, have you hidden Mrs. Grey's letters?”

Neddie turned without a word and strode down the back passage towards the kitchens. Mr. Emilious held out his hand in a gesture of gallantry; and after a moment's hesitation, the rest of us deigned to follow.

Monday, 26 August 1805 ,

near dawn

“I SUPPOSE,” MR. EMILIOUS FINCH-HATTON BEGAN, AS he helped himself to some of Cook's excellent currant jam, “you are wild to know how I come into this tangled business.”

“You flatter yourself, sir,” Neddie replied. “For my part, I should be happy to learn so litde as the manner of Mrs. Grey's death. Your own machinations are immaterial.”

“I should like to know any number of things,” I broke in, “and am not averse to hearing Mr. Finch-Hatton. I rather think we shall come to the matter of Mrs. Grey, in time.”

“Excellent woman!” Mr. Emilious cried. “Lord Harold has assuredly judged you aright.”

“Am I to conclude, then, that Lord Harold is aware of his friend's involvement in an affair of murder?”

“He warned me against you, you know,” Mr. Emilious said by way of answer. “He thought you likely to be my worst enemy, my dear Miss Austen. I endeavoured to make you my friend — but alas, events moved well beyond my ordering of them, with the discovery of those letters. Mr. Grey happened upon the correspondence, I suppose?”

“He did,” Neddie supplied.

Mr. Emilious leaned forward in some excitement, to the detriment of his shirtsleeves, which were smeared with butter. “Did he tell you where he discovered them? For upon my word, the fellows I had hoped might effect it, were quite pitiful in the application!”

“Mr. Bridges and Captain Woodford?” I surmised.

“The very same. I led those two excellent fellows to believe it a matter of some delicacy, that should compromise the lady's reputation before her husband. Woodford agreed in an instant, from concern for his friend Grey; Mr. Bridges, quite naturally, had other motives. He accepted the task for a small consideration. A man whose circumstances are so thoroughly embarrassed, must be open to almost any application. But I believe the two had a falling-out, over the question of the letters' whereabouts; each suspected the other's motives.”

“You are not a man to soil your own hands, I perceive.”

“It was hardly a question of that , Miss Austen, but one rather of efficiency. It would have looked too odd for So they to return to the house, you know, and I had never been an intimate there — but I am getting ahead of myself. Where were the letters discovered?”