Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

The buzz of conjecture behind my chair was so fierce as to make my cheeks burn with consciousness. I heard Isobel sigh beside me, and felt all the depth of her despair. Fitzroy Payne reached a hand to her elbow, but she leaned away from him, and sought support on my shoulder.

Mr. Bott's eyes were on the Countess as he posed his next question. “Is the Barbadoes nut to be found on the island of Barbadoes, Dr. Grant?”

The professor laughed aloud, as though the coroner had posed a very good joke. “From the name which they bear; my dear fellow, could one doubt it?”

After this, he was obliged to sit down, and Sir William was recalled.

“Could you explain to the jury how you came by these Barbadoes nuts?”

Sir William turned to the twelve men, whose faces grew graver by the hour, and inclined his white head. “I found them among the personal belongings of a member of the Scargrave household.”

“And how came you to search the belongings of any in that house?”

“I was requested to do so in the third and final note penned by the maid Marguerite, which bore her signature and was nailed to the door of this tavern,” Sir William replied soberly. “The note having appeared on the same day as her body was discovered, I thought it wise to explore all possible paths.”

Eliahu Bott's small eyes gleamed with anticipation. “And where exactly were the nuts disposed, Sir William?”

“I found them wrapped in a square of velvet in the pistol case belonging to Fitzroy, Lord Scargrave.”

Mr. Bott was obliged to exert himself with the gavel, an effort to restore order that for several moments must be declared to have been in vain. Isobel leaned heavily against me, all but overcome. I looked for Tom Hearst, and saw him again on his feet, his mouth open in a cry of protest that went unheard in the general melee. At last the coroner rose from his chair and threw all the strength of his small frame into a demand for silence, his eyes on Fitzroy Payne. The eighth Earl of Scargrave retained a remarkable composure throughout, though from knowing him a little, I could guess at the painful tumult of his thoughts.

Mr. Bott turned avidly to Sir William. “And what did you then, sir?”

“I ordered the body of the late Earl exhumed from its tomb.”

This was no news to the jury or the assembled townsfolk; they had seen the grim business in Scargrave Close churchyard but a few days before, and doubtless tossed it among themselves over countless tankards of ale. The coroner dismissed Sir William and recalled Dr. Pettigrew.

“Now, sir,” Mr. Bott said, running a pink tongue over dry lips, “will you describe for us the further examination of the deceased?”

“I removed the stomach and examined the contents,” Dr. Pettigrew said, impervious to a feminine shriek sent up by Fanny Delahoussaye.

“And what did they tell you?”

“They retained still the evidence of the Earl's having ingested a large quantity of Barbadoes nuts,” the doctor said evenly.

“And would the effects of such nuts be similar to those you observed in the Earl at his death?”

“I should now judge his lordship's entire illness to have been produced by the poisonous seeds themselves.”

MR. BOTT PERMITTED US A GRUDGING RESPITE BEFORE THE jury's consideration of the maid's poor case. And so Sir William conducted the Scargrave party to the privacy of a small room at the tavern's rear, where we might take temporary shelter from the townsfolk's spite. His attitude lacked its customary warmth, and I felt all the force of my old friend's suspicion; I must confess to a weariness that was consuming, and a depression of spirits no less profound.

Fanny Delahoussaye declared herself to feel faint, citing the heat of the room, the vulgarity of the crowd pressing about her; the horrid nature of the proceedings — etc., etc. Madame hovered over her anxiously, a phial of smelling salts in hand, and pronounced her daughter unfit to remain in the tavern. That Fanny merely played upon us all, the better to win attention to herself, I little doubted; but her principal object, Lieutenant Hearst, seemed indifferent to her distress, and stood in an attitude of abstracted dejection by the room's sole window. The drama ended only when Sir William called for his carriage, which had conveyed the Delahoussayes hither; and a subdued Fanny was carried home in the company of her watchful mother. That the former had hoped to be escorted by the Lieutenant, and regretted the folly of her display, I read in her peevish looks.

Isobel sat with closed eyes and deathly countenance on a chair in the corner, never speaking and hardly stirring; a silent Fitzroy Payne stood by her chair, his tortured thoughts etched upon his countenance. Mr. George Hearst bestirred himself, with surprising good will, and procured a little wine for Isobel, which had a restorative effect; but the mortifications my dear friend had endured were hardly at an end, and might be expected to worsen as the day progressed. I foresaw how it should go; and in very little time, the wine consumed, we were returned to our chairs to my surprise, llzzy scratch was first called and sworn.

She was a rough, broad woman in a worn wool dress that might once have been of a rosy hue, but was faded now with dirt and age to a dull maroon. Black mitts partly covered chilblained fingers, and on her feet she wore the stout boots of a field labourer — her late husband's, perhaps, for that she was a widow we quickly learned. She reached from time to time to adjust a ridiculous straw hat — which swept up from her frowzy brow like the masthead of a schooner, arrayed with turnips and cabbage leaves and what I judged to be a rooster's wattle. She stood before her fellow townsfolk in all the glory of notice; she knew the power of having a tale to tell.

“You are a resident of this village?” Mr. Bott's tone lacked something of the warmth with which he had addressed the magistrate.

“That I am, sir, born and bred, wed and bed, as the saying goes.” Lizzy Scratch had profited by the proceeding's several hours to consume a quantity of warm gin, that much was certain.

“And what is your occupation?”

“It's a laundress as I am, ‘aving learned the trade from my good mother; and taken it up once more when my pore Joe passed from this life.”

“And were you acquainted with the maid, Marguerite Dumas? “

“I ‘ad ‘er ladyship's washing off ‘er every ‘alf-week,” Lizzy Scratch said, staring balefully at Isobel; “and such a lot of shameful finery as the woman wore, I should not like to say. It was enough to turn the stomach of any decent woman, it was.”

“That is quite enough, Mrs. Scratch,” the coroner said peremptorily. “Please confine yourself to the questions put. Were you on intimate terms with the maid?”

“Well, I knew Margie weren't ‘appy, same as everybody else. What with being far from ‘er ferrin’ parts, and ‘ating the cold, and being that shamed by ‘er ladyship's goings-on with the Viscount that was—”

A shocked murmur ran through the ranks, and Fitzroy Payne, seated to my right, put his head in his hands.

“Mrs. Scratch, I must insist,” Mr. Bott said, with a sharp eye for the Earl. “Confine yourself to the question.”

“We was friends good enough,” the laundress said sulkily.

“Although the maid was resident in these parts less than a month?”

“Margie ‘ad taking ways, and was fond of talk, and I saw no ‘arm in ‘er.”

“And when did you last see Marguerite Dumas?”

“She come to me the day after the old Earl passed on, she did, beggin’ for some food and a roof against the cold. Said she couldn't stay in no ‘ouse where murder was done, and she'd be off as soon as she'd got ‘er story to the Justice.”