Our ill-assorted pilgrimage came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
“Mr. Austen,” the magistrate said heavily, “I must apologise again for the intrusion. There is no help for it. I have heard today such an account of the night in question — Saturday last, when Shafto French undoubtedly met his death — as must give rise to the gravest concerns and trouble. It is a weight, Mr. Austen, upon me — a weight I alone must bear. Mr. Hinton now stands accused of French’s murder.”
“That is a lie,” the gentleman retorted coldly, “as I have reiterated this half hour or more.”
“I am afraid, sir, that in so serious an affair as murder, I must subject you to certain proofs.”
“But I have told you I did not harm the man!” Hinton cried.
“Does my word mean so little, Mr. Prowting?”
The magistrate stared at him from under lowering brows. “I must beg you to step over to the corner of the cellar. Mr. Austen, you are my witness as to what is about to pass.”
Mr. Hinton swallowed convulsively, his right hand rising to the knot of his ornate cravat. Of a sudden, he appeared to me a small, ill-natured boy of a kind too often hounded in his lessons; the sort of raw cub who should mishandle his mounts and be thrown at every hedge. A coward, parading as a man of Fashion; a fool who should attempt to get by intrigue what he could not command from merit. A paltry, unfortunate, and ill-bred whelp, who should always labour under the severest conviction of ill-usage at the hands of his neighbours, resenting and envying the world by turns.
“Miss Austen, would you raise your lanthorn?”
At the arcing beam of light there was a scuttle of rats, grown by now to seem a commonplace. Link, I thought; but the terrier’s work must be forestalled at least another hour, until Mr. Prowting had seen the marks on the floor undisturbed by ravaging paws. We moved carefully towards the corner, an executioner’s lockstep honour guard, until the magistrate held up his hand.
“And now, sir — if you would be so good as to press your foot into the dust at exactly this place.”
“What?” Hinton exclaimed. “Are you mad ?”
“Pray do as I request, sir — or I shall have no alternative, I am afraid, but to abandon you to the Law.”
“I shall do no such thing!” Hinton protested. “It is absurd!
The affronteries to which I have been subjected this evening—”
“For God’s sake, man, do as I say!” Mr. Prowting burst out. The gentleman glanced at Henry, but found no support; and then, with an expression of grimmest necessity, lifted his boot and pressed it into the dirt.
I sank down with the lanthorn, so that the light illuminated the cellar floor distinctly; and discerned the outline of Mr. Hinton’s boot fresh on the floor. The footprint my brother and I had detected previously could still be seen, a ghost of the present one. To the naked eye, it appeared that the boot prints matched in every particular.
“Mr. Hinton, pray explain your movements on the night of the first of July,” Mr. Prowting demanded in a dreadful voice.
“I was from home and from Chawton,” the clergyman’s son returned defiantly, “having ridden out that morning to meet a party of friends near Box Hill, where a prize-fight was to be held. I did not return until quite late. Any of my friends will say the same.”
“Do you have an idea of the time?”
“—The time I reached home?”
“Was it before or after midnight?”
Hinton’s gaze wavered somewhat, as tho’ he began to understand his danger. “I cannot undertake to say.”
“Would it interest you to know that you were seen to dismount your horse near Chawton Pond at perhaps a quarterhour or twenty minutes past midnight, early on Sunday morning last, and to take up the body of a man you found there — a man, I would put it to you, Mr. Hinton, whom you had left there for dead some minutes before—”
“Mr. Prowting!” the gentleman cried. “You forget yourself, sir! If you will credit the silly imaginings of a goosecap girl—”
“Sir,” Mr. Prowting seethed, “it is you who forget yourself!
Observe the footprints! Can you deny that it is your boot?”
“I do not deny it.” Hinton’s lip positively curled. “You made certain you were provided with witnesses. But any boot may be much like another. The similarity in these marks can mean nothing to a man of reason.”
“Can it not?” The magistrate looked to be on the point of apoplexy. “Who is your bootmaker, sir?”
There was a pause before Hinton replied.
“I hardly know. As I said — one boot is much like another.”
“But not yours,” Henry interposed softly. He, too, was crouching now near the lanthorn’s beam, his eyes trained upon Mr. Hinton’s footwear. “These Hessians look to be of Hoby’s make, I should say, and are quite dear.[20] From the wear that can be observed on toe and heel, I should judge that you ordered them fully a twelvemonth ago, and shall probably have them replaced during a visit to Town in the autumn or winter; indeed, such an economical practise may long have been your habit. It is not every man who can afford to patronise Hoby — and only gentlemen possessed of the most exacting tastes. There cannot be another such pair of boots within twenty miles of Chawton, Mr. Hinton. I expect Hoby will have your measurements to account, and will be happy to provide them to the magistrate.”
With a swift and vicious precision, the cornered man swung his foot full in my brother’s face. Henry cried out and fell backwards, his hand clutching his nose. I cast aside the lanthorn and went to him. Blood trickled between his fingers, but still he strained against me, as tho’ he should have hurled himself at Hinton’s throat.
“Take care, my dear,” I muttered. “You cannot demand satisfaction of a murderer, Henry. He is beneath your notice.”
“Mr. Hinton!” the magistrate said accusingly. “Must you be tried for assault as well as murder?”
“I did not kill Shafto French,” he spat between his teeth,
“and well you know it, Prowting. French may have found cause enough to kill me; but I regarded the man as little as I should regard a slug worming its way through my cabbages.”
“So little, in fact, that you carried his body across the road and left it for the rats in this very cellar! Did you use your nephew Baverstock’s key for the business? We are aware, Mr. Hinton, that he may possess one. You cannot deny, man, that you stood here. For the last time, Mr. Hinton: What explanation will you offer for your actions? ”
Of a sudden, the fury seemed to drain from Hinton’s countenance, to be replaced by the coldest contempt. “I should never feel myself called upon to offer an explanation to you or any of the present miserable company. I am the last true heir of the Knights of Chawton, Prowting — and must consider myself above your jiggery-pokery Law. ”
“Very well,” the magistrate replied. “Then John-Knight Hinton, it is my painful duty as magistrate to arrest you — for the murder of Shafto French.”
Chapter 17
Too Long in the Back
Saturday, 8 July 1809
“As the house was built in the late seventeenth century,” Lady Imogen observed as she led us into a long gallery at Stonings that was more lumber room than habitable space, “it remains firmly rooted in Palladio. The serene limestone façade, for example, is virtually free of adornment; no Jacobean chimneys or Tudor panelling are to be found, and as successive generations did not see fit to alter the original style, the house preserves a delightful unity — without the awkward shifting from epoch to epoch one so often observes in less modern creations.”
“Lord!” Ann Prowting exclaimed. “I wonder you can find your way to breakfast of a morning! I should require signposts in each passage to direct me from place to place. It is a vast pile, is it not?”
20
Hoby’s establishment sat at the corner of St. James’s and Piccadilly, and was considered the most elegant gentlemen’s bootmaker of the period. Hessians were a style introduced in the early part of the nineteenth century, worn outside the trousers and curving under the knee, with a leather tassel dangling from the center front.