“I know! I cannot account for it! Do you not apprehend that the scene has arisen in my mind hour after hour until I thought I must go mad? Why does one man ever take the life of another?”
“—From jealousy. From greed. From hatred or fear. But Shafto French? Can you think of any reason why Jack Hinton the gentleman should hate or fear the labouring man?”
She was silent, lips compressed. “Only what may be found in the idle talk of any tavern in Alton,” she said at last. “The whole countryside would have it that the child Jemima French now bears is in fact Jack Hinton’s.”
“Good God!” I cried. “There is a motive for murder if ever I heard one. The dead man a cuckold — and no one sees fit to mention it to the coroner?”
She turned scandalised eyes upon me. Cuckold, I must suppose, was the sort of word that should never be mentioned around the dining table at Prowtings.
“I do not credit the story,” she rejoined firmly, “and no more does any sensible person in Alton or Chawton. Jemima was once in service at the Lodge, and was dismissed over some disagreement with Miss Hinton. But rumour has followed her, as it will any pretty girl; and French did nothing by his manners or treatment of his wife to discourage it.”
I have worked all my life, Mrs. French had told me, and am not afraid of it. Brave words for a woman with no more reputation to preserve. Improprieties, Miss Beckford had said, and ill-usage. And so the gossip had come round in a circle: from the Great House to Alton and back again to Prowtings, to form a noose for Jack Hinton’s neck.
“You must assuredly speak to your father,” I told Catherine, “and endeavour to explain why you have waited nearly a week to do so.”
“I know that I am much to blame,” she muttered brokenly, “but pray believe me, Miss Austen, when I declare that it was from no improper desire to shield Mr. Hinton from the full weight of the Law!”
Her accent in pronouncing this final word was so akin to the dignity of her father’s, that I very nearly smiled. “I had thought it possible that you preserved a tendre for the gentleman.”
“A tendre! Indeed, the esteem — the appearance of interest or affection — has been entirely on Mr. Hinton’s side. I may like — I may have respected him once, before I knew— That is to say, any sentiment of regard has been thoroughly done away by Mr. Hinton’s repulsion of my efforts to make all right.”
“Your efforts—? My dear Miss Prowting, do not say that you have informed the gentleman that you observed him to drag a body towards my cottage!”
“But of course I have! I could not so expose him to the censure of his neighbours, or indeed the risk of his very life, without taxing him with all I had seen, and begging him most earnestly to make a clean breast of his guilt to my father in private!”
I stopped short on the very edge of Alton, my feelings almost incapable of expression. “Do you not realise, you silly girl, that where a man has murdered once, he may easily do so a second time, merely to save his own neck? Your life should not have five seconds’ purchase in Mr. Hinton’s company! I only pray God you have not encountered him alone!”
“No,” she admitted, “I had not that courage. Indeed, I have loathed Mr. Hinton’s very presence since the discovery of French’s body in your cellar, and my comprehension of what it must mean. I have pled the head-ache, and taken to my room, excepting the necessity of social obligations that could not be overborne. I spoke to Mr. Hinton in the Great Hall at Chawton last night, and by way of reply, was given to understand that if I preserved any regard for his reputation, I must reveal nothing of what I had seen. He did not go so far as to threaten me—”
“Then he is not so stupid as I believed him.”
“—but neither did he reassure my darkest fears with an explanation that could soften me. He intimated — if you will credit it! — that if I might offer this proof of loyalty and esteem — if I could go so far as to shield him with my silence — that I might reasonably expect to be mistress of the Lodge one day.” She laughed abruptly; no fool Catherine. She should value such an offer as she ought, and know it for a bribe.
“When I understood, a few hours later, that my father meant to charge poor Bertie Philmore with French’s murder, I knew that I was left no choice but to act, since Mr. Hinton refused to do so.”
I placed my arm within Catherine Prowting’s as we passed the first of Alton’s shops and houses. “You are possessed of singular courage, my dear. I am determined all the same not to let you out of my sight until I have seen you safely into the care of Mr. Prowting. Let Jack Hinton do his worst — we shall be ready for him!”
We discovered, through the simple expedient of vigourous interrogation at the George Inn, that Mr. Prowting had been observed to enter Mr. John Dyer’s premises at Ivy House — a trim building not without charm, and the attraction of a series of Gothick arched casements. The magistrate was as yet engaged there. I accompanied Catherine to the builder’s door, and tho’ curious as to the nature of Mr. Prowting’s business, declined to intrude. I had an idea of the conversation: the magistrate in his heavy, forthright way demanding to know whether Bertie Philmore could have stolen Dyer’s keys to Chawton Cottage on the Saturday night of French’s murder; and Mr. Dyer — in his succinct, pugnacious style — steadfastly refusing to allow it to be possible. Mr. Prowting was destined to suffer a revolution of opinion, and a disorder of all his ideas, when once his daughter’s story was heard; but I did not like to witness his discomfiture. Let him endure the severest pangs of regret beyond the reach of his neighbours, and collect his faculties during the brief walk home from Alton to Chawton. Prowting would require the full measure of his sense for the coming interview with Mr. John-Knight Hinton, Esquire. The murder of Shafto French might well be explained by Catherine Prowting’s confession, but the disappearance of Lord Harold’s chest was not. I made my own way to Normandy Street, and kept a keen lookout for a yard full of laundry. Halfway up the lane, on the opposite side of the paving, I detected a quantity of white lawn secured by wooden pegs to a line of rope. A tidy picket preserved the yard from the ravages of dogs and children, and a few flowers bloomed near its palings. No figure moved among the hanging linen, and the door of the nearby cottage was closed. I glanced upwards at the chimney, however, and observed a thin thread of smoke. A girl of perhaps ten years answered my knock, and stared at me gravely from the threshold.
“Is your mother within?”
She nodded mutely.
“You may tell her that Miss Jane Austen is come to call.”
“Bid the lady welcome, Mary,” a voice commanded from the interior.
The child stepped back, pulling the door wide. I moved into the room, and saw that it was no foyer or front passage, but merely the cottage’s place of all work, with a few benches drawn up to a scrubbed pine table, a hob with a great kettle boiling on the banked embers of the hearth, and several irons warming in the fire. A woman sat rocking an infant at her breast; she gazed at me with neither welcome nor trepidation on her features.
“Are you Rosie Philmore?”
“I am.”
“Miss Jane Austen, at your service. It was at my home in Chawton, Mrs. Philmore, that your husband was. ” I glanced at the silent little girl named Mary and hesitated. “. found, last evening.”
“What of it?”
The child moved swiftly to her mother’s side and stared at me with wide and frightened eyes.
“Would it be possible to talk a while,” I attempted, “in private?”
“Do you go in search of your brothers, Mary,” Mrs. Philmore said. “They’ll be down near the Wey, I’ll be bound, fishing with young Zakariah Gibbs. Tell them their dinner’s waiting. Go on, now.”