Stephanie Barron - Jane and The Wandering Eye

“Rot!” The magistrate grunted, and slapped his knees with decision. “Very well — come along with you, my lord.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“To the gaol!”

The Dowager Duchess cried out with horror, and staggered at her granddaughter’s shoulder. Lady Desdemona’s arm came up in support, but she uttered not a word.

“I am very sorry, Your Grace,” the magistrate continued, “but there it is — we must have Lord Kinsfell along to the gaol! For one man is dead, as you will observe, and another must pay for it; and in the absence of the unseen fellow at the window, I cannot think that anyone will do nearly so well as his lordship!”

“But I am innocent!” the Marquis cried.

“Perhaps you are, my lord,” Mr. Elliot responded kindly. “Perhaps, indeed, you are. But what does that signify, if you cannot possibly prove it?”

12 December 1804, cont.

I AWOKE THIS MORNING RATHER LATER THAN IS MY WONT, being entirely overset by the events of last evening and the weariness of my return from Laura Place. Thus I made my way to the breakfast-room in every expectation of finding it quite deserted. But here presentiment failed me — for at the sound of my step upon the threshold, the assembled Austens each turned a countenance suffused with false innocence. From their eager looks it was apparent that word of the murder had preceded me.

“Well, my love!” my mother cried, waving her napkin with some animation, “make haste! Make haste! We have been expecting you this quarter-hour. I will not be satisfied until I have heard it from your own lips. A lovers’ quarrel, so Mr. Austen’s paper says, but with theatre people, it might have been as much a joke as anything. There is no accounting for an actor’s taste.”

“Although in this instance,” I observed, as I pulled back my chair, “it is the manager who is dead.”

“There, now!” My mother rapped the table triumphantly. “And so we cannot hope ever to learn the truth of the matter from him. All dispute is at an end. But I cannot be entirely mute upon the subject, Jane. I cannot turn so blind an eye to the comportment of my youngest daughter. How you can find diversion in such a business—”

“Diversion, ma’am?”

“You have a decided predilection for violence, my dear, and if the habit does not alter, no respectable gentleman will consider you twice. Only reflect,” she admonished, with a pointed gesture from her butter knife — “you are not growing any younger, Jane.”

“Nor are we any of us.”

“Jane, dear, let me pour out your chocolate,” said my sister Cassandra, reaching hastily for my cup.

“Tea, rather — for my head does ache dreadfully.”

“Gentlemen of discernment,” my mother continued, warming to her subject, “cannot bear a young lady’s being too familiar with blood. I have always held that a girl should know as little of blood as possible, even if she be mad for hunting. When the fox is killed, it behooves a lady to be busy about her mount, or on the brink of a pretty observation regarding the landscape’s picturesqueness. So I believe, and so our James agrees — and he hunts with the Vyne [14] The Vyne, in Sherborne St. John, Hampshire, was the ancestral home of the Chute family and their entailed heirs; Jane’s eldest brother, James Austen, was vicar of the parish from 1791, and frequently hunted with William-John Chute, master of the Vyne foxhounds. — Editor’s note. , you know, and must be treated to refinement in such matters on every occasion. Blood, and torn flesh, may only be termed vulgar. Are not you of my opinion, Mr. Austen? Was it not very bad of Jane to have remained in such a place, once the knives were got out?”

“Oh, there cannot be two opinions on the subject, my love,” my father replied with a satiric eye. “A knife will always be vulgar, particularly in the drawing-room. The kitchens and the dining-parlour are its proper province; but when it seeks to climb so high as a Duchess’s salon — even a Dowager Duchess’s — we may consider ourselves on the point of revolution.”

“Dear madam,” I intervened, “be assured that I quitted Laura Place as soon as it was possible to do so. The general flight of guests rendered chairs remarkably scarce, and it was a full hour before Henry could obtain a suitable conveyance — a chaise summoned from his inn — which would set Madam Lefroy down in Russell Street before returning to Green Park Buildings. We hastened home as swiftly as our means allowed. Do but pity poor Henry and Eliza, who faced a longer journey still to their rooms at the White Hart, before finding the mercy of their beds. They cannot have arrived before four o’clock.”

“Well,” my mother said with some asperity, “since the matter is past all repair — the vulgarity endured — you might favour us with a report of the affair.”

“Was Lord Kinsfell truly taken up for murder?” Cassandra enquired. So the papers had printed that much.

“He was,” I replied sadly, “the knife having fallen from his grasp before an hundred witnesses. The manager of the Theatre Royal, one Richard Portal, lay bleeding at Kinsfell’s feet, all life extinguished. The knife point found his heart. Or so said Dr. Gibbs, who examined the body. He is the Dowager Duchess’s physician, and was present last evening at Her Grace’s invitation, in the guise of a Moor.”

“But is it likely that the Marquis of Kinsfell would stoop so low as to murder a common actor?” My father was all amazement.

I sipped at my tea and found that it was grown disappointingly cold. The virtuous Austens had lingered long over the cloth in expectation of my intelligence.

“Mr. Portal was hardly a common actor, Father. He has had the management of the company since Mrs. Siddons’s day, and has won the respect of all in Bath. It is at Portal’s direction and expense that the new theatre in Beauford Square is being built. [15] This opened for the 1805 season, despite Portal’s death. — Editor’s note. Mr. Portal was possessed of high spirits and considerable address — a tolerably handsome gentleman, in the flood tide of life. I may hardly credit the notion of his murder, much less Lord Kinsfell’s guilt; but I must suppose that the magistrate, Mr. Elliot, will very soon find the matter out.”

“You presume no such thing,” my father retorted testily. “You abhor justices with a passion, as I very well know. ‘They seek only to make a case against some unfortunate innocents, while the true culprit goes free.’ Is not that a quotation, my dear Jane, from one of your very own letters? A letter written from Scargrave Manor?”

“I will not pretend to an unalloyed admiration for English justice,” I ventured, “but I may, perhaps, have spoken then too warmly. I do not abhor such respectable gentlemen as Sir William Reynolds. [16] Sir William Reynolds, a former schoolmate of Austen’s father at Oxford, was the baffled justice last encountered in Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. — Editor’s note. Nor may I assume that Mr. Elliot is entirely incapable. Mr. Elliot is a singular fellow, assuredly — both gross in his humours and repulsive in his person — but a shrewd and cunning intellect nonetheless.”

“If Lord Kinsfell was found with the knife,” Cassandra innocently observed, “what doubt can possibly exist? Does his lordship deny the murder?”

“Naturally!” I said, with more attention to my plate than it deserved. “He should be a fool to do otherwise, whether he be guilty or no.”