At the thought of the stolen chest, I felt a tide of misery rise up within me. We had hastened from the Great House last evening, Henry and Mamma and I, in the company of Mr. Prowting and Mr. Middleton both. We had not tarried to take proper leave of the Stonings party, nor yet of Mr. Prowting’s family, who remained in the drawing-room with the delightful prospect of canvassing our private affairs behind our backs. I read triumph in Jack Hinton’s looks as I bade him farewell, and knew that he regarded me with derision and contempt. But it made no matter: my thoughts were all for Lord Harold’s legacy. Wretched, wretched woman that I am, not to have detected in our convenient absence from the cottage, while dining at the Great House, an opportunity for plunder!
We found the new bow window torn from its frame, glass panes smashed, with a small knot of folk collected in the garden. I recognised the baker woman, and Toby Baigent standing by the side of a burly man who must be his father; the others I could not name. And there was Bertie Philmore, his back thrust up against a tree that shaded the Street, his arms securely gripped by a pair of strangers and a surly expression upon his face.
“Well, then, Morris,” Mr. Prowting called out to one of Bertie’s captors as we approached, “what have you found?”
“This lad a-climbing out of the cottage’s bow window, Mr. Prowting, sir,” Morris replied.
“That is my groom,” the magistrate told Henry, “and a likely fellow if ever I knew one. I thought it probable that Philmore would return to the cottage once your mother deserted it, and so I set Morris to watch upon the place, and inform me when the ruffian appeared.”
I had wondered if Mr. Prowting’s powers of intellect were stouter than they had at first seemed, and was amply satisfied with this answer. “But why should Philmore return, sir — if indeed he was ever within the cottage before?” I enquired reasonably. Mr. Prowting wheeled upon me with a look like thunder. “Is it not obvious, Miss Austen? Because he is drawn to the place where he murdered his friend, Shafto French — because his guilty conscience compels him to return to the gruesome pit in which he left the body!”
Henry’s eyebrows rose. “I agree that the cellar is malodorous and damp, but to call it a—”
“I never killed Shafto!” Philmore burst out. “I were at home in bed when he died, same as my Rosie’ll tell you!”
“Was anything found on this man’s person?” I demanded. Mr. Prowting glared at Morris. “Well, sirrah? Did the ruffian make off with the Austens’ property?”
“No, sir. It were just him, sir, jumping down from the windowsill.”
“You see, Miss Austen? A guilty conscience will prove the answer!”
I studied Philmore’s countenance as he strained against Morris’s grip. Far from appearing terrified at the tendency of the magistrate’s accusations, there was a suspicion of smugness in his looks, an air of having bested all comers. My heart desponding, I took the key to the door from my mother’s hand and made my way past the knot of gawkers. Henry followed. My brother emitted a low whistle as he stepped over the threshold.
The contents of the trunks and wooden boxes we had meant to unpack during the course of the week were everywhere scattered about the room: a few earthenware plates smashed and ground to dust, linens strewn in disorder, books tumbled from the shelves. A quantity of paper had been trampled underfoot, and a bottle of ink spilled over all. A trail of ruin led from kitchen to dining parlour and up the main stairs, and I knew before I reached my bedroom what I should find. The drawers of my dressing table were emptied, the mattress torn from the bedstead, and my clothes thrown in a heap on the floor.
I dashed to the empty bed frame and felt beneath the tumbled coverlet. The Bengal chest was gone.
“But who can have taken it, Henry?” I demanded for the tenth time as we endeavoured, late that night, to restore order from chaos. “Philmore is mute on the subject and Morris is adamant that Philmore had nothing in his hands when he stepped through the window. We have searched house and garden alike.”
“Then we must assume Morris was too late, Jane,” my brother patiently replied, “and that Philmore gave the chest to a confederate before quitting the house himself.”
“One man alone cannot have accomplished all this,” my mother agreed, from her position of collapse on the sittingroom sopha. She was lying at her ease with a vinaigrette and hartshorn, the better to observe our labours. “I should think a party of ten much more likely.”
“One such another as Philmore is sufficient,” I retorted, “to make off with my chest and destroy it forever. I could throttle the man from sheer vexation!”
“Tho’ strangulation is unlikely to encourage him to speak,” Henry supplied.
Philmore’s story was that he happened to be passing the cottage when he noticed a light and observed the shattered window. Approaching with the intention of offering his services to Mrs. Austen, as he said, he swiftly ascertained that none of the family was within — and plunged with no other weapon than his fists into a battle of the most fearsome kind. Philmore had fought a man — a man he could not describe — and tho’ he emerged without a scratch upon his person, had been so soundly beaten as to lose his senses, and awoke some time later to find the miscreant gone. He had met with Mr. Prowting’s man Morris upon exiting the window, and had been most cruelly set upon, tho’ he endeavoured to explain the virtuousness of his actions.
Mr. Prowting declared this a Banbury tale, and insisted that Philmore’s soul was black with guilt.
When taxed with the disappearance of the chest, the joiner had preserved an awful silence. Neither threat of hanging nor the prospect of a protracted lodging in the Alton gaol could move Philmore to a confession, save to utter the obvious: he had no trunk in his possession at present, and could not be proved to have made off with it. This was a sticking point in Mr. Prowting’s deliberations — and Philmore clearly believed it should secure him from guilt in the eyes of the Law. The magistrate muttered darkly about charges and the Assizes, but Philmore only stared at his boots with that expression of satisfaction I had previously observed so strongly writ on his countenance.
“He is hardly the disinterested hero,” I mused, “and believes himself in possession of a fortune, Henry. He will not split on his confederate, however, for fear of losing the same. He intends to profit from his appearance of innocence — and guard the truth of the chest’s whereabouts like a bulldog. We shall have to use other means to discover the name of his accomplice. I mean to have my papers returned.”
My brother paused in collecting the scraps of fabric my mother intended for a pieced quilt. Any number were ruined with ink.
“What exactly does the joiner believe he has stolen, Jane? A King’s Ransom in jewels, as is popularly believed — or an unknown object of great worth to another party?”
I stared at him. “You would suggest that Bertie Philmore took the chest without knowing what it contained? — That he was set to steal it, by his confederate or. or another person?”
“Perhaps he was offered a considerable reward,” Henry said mildly. “By someone who had reason to know that our entire party would be from home this evening.”
“One of Mr. Middleton’s guests?”
“Any number of our fellow diners would give a good deal to know what Lord Harold has written about them, by your account.”
“That is true,” I said blankly, a scrap of fabric in my hands. A parade of faces revolved in my mind: Jack Hinton, whom I had observed in urgent converse with Philmore only the previous day — and might easily secure a key to the cottage from his nephew, James Baverstock; Julian Thrace, who might find in Lord Harold’s papers an end to all his ambitions; and Lady Imogen, who should regard the chest as her chief weapon in a ruthless struggle to preserve her inheritance.