The elderly solicitor reached for his walking-stick and, with one hand braced on my mother’s table, thrust himself to his feet. I was struck of a sudden by the devotion that had kept him sedulously in pursuit of his duty, when another man of his advanced years should have been already nodding by the fire.
“Mr. Chizzlewit, you have my deepest gratitude,” I said soberly.
“No thanks are necessary.” He stared at me as though I had uttered an impertinence. “I was honoured by his lordship’s confidence. We are all of us diminished by his foul murder.”
And pressing a heavy lead key into my palm, he wordlessly bowed.
The interview, I perceived, was at an end.
Chapter 4
Of Knights and Villains
4 July 1809, cont.
“Letters!” my mother exclaimed in horror upon her return, unmindful of Mr. Prowting at her elbow. “What kind of a man leaves his paramour letters? A cottage perhaps, in a good situation — an annuity of a thousand pounds for the remainder of your days — but a bundle of papers not worth the ink smeared over them? Was the Rogue mad, Jane?”
“Never more so,” I replied. “Have you enjoyed your walk, Mamma?”
“Fiddle my walk!” She rounded on Mr. Prowting. “You will have heard, I am sure, of Lord Harold Trowbridge — a Whig and an adventurer, for all he was the son of a duke; not content with having his fingers in every Government pie, and spoiling them all, but he must break my poor girl’s heart! I can only say, Mr. Prowting, that murder is too good for him. He was born to be hanged!”
“So I apprehend, ma’am, from the London papers,” the magistrate said stiffly. “I had not understood that you were on terms of acquaintance with the gentleman— For so we must call him, in deference to his birth. That at least remains unimpeachable.”
“And a good deal of money the old Duke must have laid down to make it so,” my mother retorted shrewdly. I chose to ignore this impertinence, in deference to the heaviness of her disappointment, and turned instead to the magistrate. “His lordship’s Bengal chest is of considerable size, Mr. Prowting. Would you be so kind as to assist me in securing it?”
Mr. Chizzlewit’s warning had not been lost upon me. Lord Harold’s enemies were numerous and determined; death alone should not quiet their fears. I had weighed the merits of henhouse and privy as unlikely objects of a thief’s interest, but settled instead upon the depths of the cottage as being more convenient to hand. Our present abode having once served as an alehouse, it must be assumed that the cellars were commodious and in good repair. A double-doored hatch protruded from nether region to yard, undoubtedly for the purpose of rolling barrels of ale within; but this could be secured from below by a stout bar. I might sit upon Lord Harold’s papers like a hen upon an egg, a priest upon a crypt, alive to every threat of violation.
“I am entirely at your service,” Mr. Prowting said with a bow. A foetid air rose from the damp and musty space as I descended the narrow stairs, a tallow candle held aloft.
“You will require a manservant,” the magistrate declared. He was puffing from exertion, the wooden casket clutched precariously in his arms. “I shall take upon myself the task of securing a likely fellow from Alton.”
“He must be called William or John, mind. I depend upon that.” A scuttling of feet greeted my flame, and for an instant I hesitated on the bottom step. “Does the history of our former alehouse encompass smuggling, Mr. Prowting?”
“Every alehouse in the country must. Your brandy will not serve, unless it comes by stealth from France. But that is no Gentleman of the Night, Miss Austen. You will also be wanting a dog, I think — a stout little terrier to clear your cupboards for you.”
In the glow of the tallow I observed several dark and stealthy forms stealing from a heap of sacking that filled one corner of the cellar. Rats. Decidedly rats. I repressed a shudder and quitted the final step, the fitful play of my candle throwing grotesque shadows about the stone walls.
“Pah — we must open the hatch.” Mr. Prowting set the chest heavily on the sandy floor, and heedless of the dust and cobwebs that must adorn it, reached for the wooden bar that secured the double doors set into the cellar’s ceiling. In an instant they were thrust wide, and light and air streamed down from the pleasant summer afternoon above like a benediction of Providence.
“Ah,” the magistrate breathed with satisfaction. “That shall soon mend matters. The atmosphere was better suited to a tomb—”
He broke off, mouth sadly agape, eyes fixed on the cellar corner. I turned my head to follow his gaze, and to my shame let out a cry. The bars of sunlight shafting through the open hatch revealed the pile of sacking to be something more: the figure of a man, laid out in all the rigour of death.
“Good God!” Mr. Prowting moved with surprising swiftness to the corpse.
The unfortunate wretch was clothed as a labourer — from village or field — and from the strength of his form, had been in the prime of life. His arms were slack by his sides and one leg sprawled akimbo, as tho’ he had dropped off to sleep of an afternoon; but his countenance was unrecognisable. The rats, I judged, had been feeding upon it some time.
“Quite dead,” Mr. Prowting murmured.
“But how did he come here?” I exclaimed. “The house was shut up!”
The magistrate’s looks were blank. “Mr. Dyer of Alton will have possessed a key.”
Of course. The builder and his improvements. “Do you know this poor man at all? Is he one of Dyer’s men?”
“With such a visage, who can say? How is his own mother to know him?” Prowting stared down at the ravaged figure. “A dreadful business. And on the very day of your arrival — for the Squire’s sister to make such a discovery—”
“It is a pity Mr. Chizzlewit is already gone,” I observed. “We might otherwise have sent word to the George and summoned a carter. The body should be removed to the inn in expectation of the coroner. I am sure my brother would wish it.”
My neighbour appeared to return to his senses from a great way off. He studied me strangely. “You are not overpowered by the sight, Miss Austen?”
“I am sadly lacking in delicate sensibility, Mr. Prowting. I have lived too long in the world.”
His gaze sharpened and he drew me towards the stairs.
“There is likely to be some unpleasantness these few hours. You will wish to retire, I think; and will be very welcome in Mrs. Prowting’s drawing-room.”
“But, sir— How did the unfortunate die?”
“A fit, perhaps.”
“What sort of fit strikes down a healthy man?”
“There is a strong stench of spirits about the corpse,” Mr. Prowting said abruptly. “I think it very likely he died of excessive drink, Miss Austen. And now, if you would be so good—”
I bowed my head, and went to break the news to my mother.
“You are no stranger to Hampshire, I collect, Mrs. Austen?” enquired the magistrate’s wife as she served herself from a dish of chicken and peas. Dinner at Prowtings had been delayed until the fashionable hour of seven o’clock, from all the necessity of a corpse’s removal. Mr. Prowting had found occasion to stand for two hours in the street, while a crowd of gawking village folk materialised to observe the proceedings. Word of the gruesome tragedy had spread like wildfire through every tenant’s cot, but no one appeared in the guise of anxious mourner — no woman stood with wringing hands and suckling babe to claim the Dead as her own. I observed this, and drew the obvious conclusion: the corpse did not belong to Chawton. We should have to look farther afield for the dead man’s name. Poor Joseph, our driver of the morning, had returned from Mr. Barlow’s establishment in Alton with a heavy dray, and an ominous object swathed in old linen was swung upwards from the cellar hatch. At the departure of the corpse, a few boys made to follow it into Alton; but the majority of our neighbours dispersed, hastened on their way by the magistrate’s abjurations. My mother, after an appropriate shriek and fainting fit, had suffered herself to be supported the length of the Prowtings’ long gravel sweep under the eyes of the entire village — and hugely enjoyed her role as tragic heroine. There could be nothing like the Austens’ descent upon their new home, I thought with some exasperation. First, a delegation of solicitors bearing mysterious chests; and then a dead man in the cellar — all in the space of a single afternoon! We should provide the village with matter for conjecture sufficient to endure a twelvemonth, and feed young Baigent’s claims that our household was indeed cursed.