Resolutely, Catherine began again. “On the evening of Saturday last, I went to my room at ten o’clock, as is my habit. I was not conscious of the passage of the hours as I lay wakeful in my bed, the usual sounds of a summer night drifting through the open window; but I recollect with the sharpest clarity the tolling of the St. Nicholas church bell at midnight. I sat up, and counted the strokes, and told myself that this wretched want of peace must end, or utterly destroy my pleasure in life. I lit my candle and took up the book that sits always near my pillow, and read for a little; and when the heaviness of my eyes suggested I might at last find rest, I first got up, and fetched a drink of water from the washstand. I was returning to the tumbled bedclothes once more — when I heard the most dreadful noises arising from the darkness.”
She glanced at me appealingly, as tho’ wishing to be spared the next few words. “It was the sound of men fighting. I went to the window and lifted the sash so widely that I might lean out into the summer’s night. The moon was almost at the full, and the scene below was as clear to me as daylight. In the distance, well beyond the reach of our sweep and the angle of your cottage, two men were locked in a furious embrace, grappling.”[18]
“Could you distinguish their faces?”
She shook her head in the negative. “I could not. The distance at which they moved prevented me from recognising their features.”
“But I thought you said. ”
“Pray hear me out, Miss Austen,” she demanded. “This is difficult enough.”
I inclined my head, and so she continued.
“They were emitting the most horrid noises imaginable. Or I should say: one of the men was doing so. Grunts, hoarse cries, squeals of pain. The other — the taller of the two — preserved an awful silence, as tho’ so intent upon his object, that he could not spare a thought for his injuries. As I watched, he o’erwhelmed his adversary and drove the man down towards the earth. I heard nothing more. I believe, now, that he had succeeded in thrusting Shafto French’s head — for so I guess the lesser man to have been — beneath the waters of Chawton Pond. After an interval, all grappling ceased; and the victor rose.”
“Good God,” I said. “Why did you not scream? Why did you not sound the alarum, and rouse your father?”
“I was paralysed by the violence and horror I had witnessed,” she returned quietly. “Fear pressed so heavily upon my breast that I do not believe I could have spoken, had I tried; and my trembling arms could barely support my frame as I leaned without the window. It is fortunate I did not swoon entirely away. And there was also this, Miss Austen: the quality of the scene, in its flood of moonlight, was so spectral as to convince me I had witnessed nothing but a dream, a nightmare of my own mind’s fabrication. Altho’ terrified, I could not be convinced in that moment that what I saw was real. ”
I could, in truth, comprehend the disorder of her wits, and the cruel doubt of her mind. “And the rest of the household heard nothing?”
“My sister Ann is a sound sleeper, and her room — like my parents’—is at the rear. We are all so accustomed to the noise of coaches passing along the Winchester Road of nights, that little can disturb our slumbers. I believe I overheard the scene by the pond solely because I was already awake.”
“I understand. And what did you then?”
She shook her head furiously, as if she might shake off the hideous memory. “I could not move. I remained by the window, staring out in an agony of indecision and disbelief. The man rose — the man whom I now comprehend was French’s murderer — and moved into the shadows of the trees bordering the pond. He must have untethered a horse at that point, for the only sound I subsequently heard was that of hoofbeats, as his mount made its way down the road.”
“Did he ride south, in the direction of Winchester — or north, past your sweep, towards Alton?”
“South,” she replied. “He did not pass within my sight at that time.”
I was silent an instant, revolving the intelligence. Julian Thrace had admitted to riding out of the Great House a little after midnight, but would claim that he had gone north in the direction of Alton. Had he indeed murdered Shafto French, this declaration was no more than wisdom. Thrace must assume that Mr. Middleton would freely disclose his presence in Chawton on the night of the murder and his departure at very nearly the hour of French’s death. Had Thrace quitted the Great House by previous arrangement with his victim? Was Thrace the heir as would pay, in Shafto French’s words?
“It was as I stood there, drawing shuddering breaths and attempting to calm my disordered wits,” Catherine persisted, “that the sound of hoofbeats returned.”
“Returned?”
“Even so. The horse drew up near the pond, and after an interval of silence — which might have encompassed a minute or an hour, Miss Austen, I scarcely know — I observed a figure to dismount, and bend over a dark object lying like a felled tree in the grass. Next I knew, the living man was struggling across the Winchester Road with the ankles of the other in his grasp, dragging that mortal weight in the direction of your cottage. I stared through the darkness, my heart in my mouth, for I knew the place to be deserted. I lost sight of them both at the hedge enclosing your property.”
I gazed at Catherine Prowting, aghast at such a want of resolution: “And even then, you did not go to your father with a cry of murder?”
“I did not yet know that French — for it must have been he — was indeed dead, Miss Austen. He might only have been insensible, from the effects of his beating or the drink that might have inspired it. How could I know? I merely stood, in the most dreadful suspense imaginable, by the open window. And presently, the second man returned.”
She paused at this point, as tho’ summoning strength for what she must now say.
“He approached his horse and mounted; and this time he rode in the opposite direction — towards the Great House, and Alton beyond. As he passed by the end of our sweep, I discerned his profile clearly in the moonlight, and knew in an instant whose it was. No other gentleman’s could be so immediately recognisable.”
The path of duty, versus the urgings of the heart.
“You saw Julian Thrace?” I whispered.
“Mr. Thrace?” She blushed with a swift and painful intensity.
“No, no, Miss Austen — it was Mr. Jack Hinton I observed in the Street that night.”
I could not contain my astonishment at this revelation, and must be thrice assured of its veracity before I could take it in. Mr. Hinton! Mr. Hinton, who had professed disdain for the coroner’s proceeding, tho’ sitting pale and silent through the whole; Mr. Hinton, who had affected to abhor violence and the pollution of Chawton’s shades. Mr. Hinton, who called himself the heir of the Hampshire Knights, and who thus might reasonably be styled the object of Shafto French’s greed, did the blackmailing labourer know somewhat to the gentleman’s discredit. And there was the fact of Hinton’s blood tie to James Baverstock, who might have provided a key to our cottage. But Mr. Hinton — the indolent poet of my imagining — seemed the unlikeliest candidate for murder in all the countryside. What could be the meaning of it?
“Why should Jack Hinton kill Shafto French?” I demanded of Catherine.
“I do not know. Perhaps it was. a mistake of some kind.”
“You did not describe a mistake, but an episode of deadly intent. What you witnessed from your window that night was a deliberate act of murder.”