Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“Must you surely die, then?” I said brokenly.

“It seems I must,” he replied, in some bitterness of spirit, “—unless it be that chaos reign, and fire cover the earth, and these bonds be loosed by hands more powerful than my own. But do not cry, dear Jane! Perhaps we shall meet again — be it only beyond the grave!”

I felt the sharp prick of tears to my eyelids, and thrust myself to my feet, unwilling and unable to linger more. At the gaol's entry,? turned for one last glimpse of Geoffrey Sidmouth.

“There may be men with a greater claim to unblemished reputation,’” I said, “but none to bravery. It is something, indeed, to know myself your friend. Adieu, Mr. Sidmouth — and courage! in that most mortal hour.”

And so I knocked upon the portal, and emerged into daylight, and the curious eyes of Gordy Trimble — and let the little gaoler think what calumnies he might.

AN INVOCATION OF FIRE, AND OF CHAOS UNLEASHED. I HAD THOUGHT it a pretty speech, from a man in contemplation of his fate, and gave it no more consideration than I should a verse of Cowper's — stirring words, to be sure, and well-phrased, but with little of prophecy about them. I made my slow way home, and endured a listless dinner, my thoughts unabashedly pensive; for the few moments I had spent in Sidmouth's arms were calculated to send any woman's principles to the winds (yes, even a clergyman's daughter), and at the thought that I should never see him the more, I could not but be melancholy. My father observed me narrowly, but forbore from interrogation; and even James — though ignorant of the cause of my Ianguor — had something of sympathy in his tone as he bade me good night.

“You are returned, then, from your day of liberty?” I said, my hand on the stair-rail. My parents had preceded me to bed, leaving me to close up the house in the manservant's company, with only a tallow taper between us to light the way. If there was the thinnest paring of a new moon, a bank of clouds had sufficed to hide its light, and the night beyond the windows was very black. “I hope it was not entirely a slave to my service.”

“Not a'tall, miss — though I'd count it no hardship if ‘twere.”

“I am deeply grateful for your energy and intelligence, James.”

He blushed scarlet, and knew not where to look. A sudden recovery of his memory, however, gave him relief in providing a purpose. “Beggin' yer pardon, miss, but there's one thing as we forgot to talk of, with Matty Hurley this afternoon.”

“Indeed?”

“You were wonderin’ ‘bout his work on the gangs, if I recollect.”

“I was.”

“And whether he ever worked wit’ Bill Tibbit on a job for the Captain wot's dead.” James threw home the front door bolt with a satisfying thud.

“You need not concern yourself with enquiring further of Mr. Hurley, James,” I began, “for I learned something to advantage this afternoon that makes all such questions of the Captain's garden irrelevant.”

James shrugged. “Don't need to enquire further” he replied. “Me and Matty's talked o’ it already. He never worked wit’ Bill at the Captain's, him havin’ chose his own folk, on the quiet-like, and kept ‘em paid proper. Seems as if Bill spent three or four months up Charmouth way, when he warn't drinkm’ in the Three Cups.”

My interest was piqued despite myself, though the tunnel was no longer an object of mystery. “And did Captain Fielding engage only the one man?”

James shook his head. “There was one or two others. Dick Trevors, and Martin Ciive maybe, and old Ebenezer Smoot, ‘im with the high voice and the soft ‘ead.”

“Dick and — Ebenezer?” My voice, I confess, was tremulous.

James nodded, and paused at the foot of the stairs, preparatory to leaving me for the evening. “Marty died o’ the fever last May, and I ‘aven't seen Dick lately, come to think on it, nor Eb neither.”

“I believe they are gone to London,” I said drily, remembering their fear of the Reverend and his vanished silk, “on rather pressing business. The result of having mislaid something of value to their current employer.”

“They've never gone and filched from Mr. Crawford?” James exclaimed, in surprise.

“Mr. Crawford?”

“Aye. They've been a-workin’ them fossil pits, and his bit of a smithy, most o’ the summer now.” The manservant scratched his head in wonderment. “Dick and Eb, run off with Mr. Crawford's property! There's something like. Now what they want with them bits o' stone, then?”

25 September 1804

MR. CRAWFORD, THE EMPLOYER OF DICK AND EBENEZER — Mr. Crawford, whose passion for fossils allowed him unquestioned observation of the Charmouth coast, and a presence for labourers on each and every day, and a cavernous excavation where he might easily have constructed a hidden room, for the purpose of secreting contraband — Mr. Crawford, whose demeanour and reputation assured him an unquestioned propriety, the better for conducting his nefarious business. Mr. Crawford, who never lacked for tea, or the best of brandies, and whose sister went about clothed in a dressmaker's dream of black silk; Mr. Crawford, whose fortune seemed so easy, despite his open hand to friends, and the liberality that too often placed others in his debt — a debt, perhaps, that might purchase goodwill and silence, did those friends think to question his activities.

Mr. Crawford, who clearly knew of Sidmouth's habit of marking his horses” shoes, and was quick to tell the entirety of his dinner guests the fact, only a day before Captain Fielding met his untimely end. Mr. Crawford, whose friendship with Sidmouth might make him privy to the man's concerns, and cognizant of the import of a white lily left by the dead man's feet; and whose sadness at discovering the very hoofprints that should betray his friend, must disarm the suspicions of ail — particularly Mr. Dobbin, the justice, who could not be expected to believe such a gentleman in any way involved in a crime of passion. Mr. Crawford, whose forge at the fossil site might readily have served to craft such a set of shoes, well before he undertook to murder the man whose relations with the Lyme Customs officer, Roy Cavendish, had quite disrupted his lucrative trade.

Mr. Crawford the Reverend, and Percival Fielding's murderer. It strained even my propensity for cynical calculation.

I sat down upon the lowest step in an attitude of shock, the lighted taper dropping from my nerveless fingers. James could not suppress an exclamation of anxiety, and fell to his knees by my side.

“Dear miss!” he cried. “Are you unwell? What can I have said?”

I reached a shaking hand to ward off his concern. “It is nothing, James — nothing — a mere trifling indisposition. I shall be myself in a moment.”

“A glass o’ water, mebbe?” He dashed into the scullery and rummaged about in a cupboard, reappearing instantly with a saucerless teacup filled to the brim. “You drink that down, now, miss, and you'll be right as rain.”

I brushed his hand aside and rose, my faculties all but routed. “I must be off at once,” I said. “I must speak with Mr. Dobbin!”

“At such an hour?” James's voice was doubtful, and I saw from his look that he thought my senses quite fled. “He'll be a-bed, surely, or close to it.”

“That is as nothing. The man must be stopped.”

“What man, Miss?”

I ascended the stairs as hastily as I knew how, in search of a bonnet and cloak, paying little heed to my father, who emerged from his bedroom in nightshirt and cap, his countenance overlaid with wonder.