“As glass, sir.”
“Your master is from home, I presume?”
“He's in London, like always.”
“Then a messenger must be sent to him with the news. The housekeeper will look to it.”
“Like as not she'll send me,” the jockey volunteered. “I usually knows where the master can be found.”
Tom glanced at his murdered mistress, who lay so still amidst the dust and the singing cicadas. “What about milady?”
“We shall convey her to Canterbury,” Neddie answered gently, and clapped the boy's shoulder. “She must lie for a while at the Hound and Tooth, for there will be an inquest.”
“Inquest? But that rogue as did for 'er is standing 'ere, large as life!” the boy spat out, and his fists clenched again. “If I'd been with 'er, as I shoulda been, you wouldn't be looking so easy, Mr. Collingforth, sir!”
“Hold your tongue, Tom,” Neddie said sharply. “This is not the time or place for harsh words. The coroner will determine Mr. Collingforth's guilt. You must tell the housekeeper where Mrs. Grey lies — the Hound and Tooth, in Canterbury.”
“I'll tell 'em everything,” he replied, his face crumpling once more. “They'll want to come and see to 'er.”
“I'm afraid that will have to wait until after the coroner has examined the corpse. Now off with you both to the stables!” Neddie's voice was stern — a palpable support, at such a time. “You have a duty that cannot wait.”
“Aye, sir.” The tyger touched his cap, the jockey bowed, and away they dashed without another word.
“Neddie,” Lizzy murmured in his ear, “I cannot like Fanny's situation. Miss Sharpe, too, is most indisposed.”
“I shall send you back to Godmersham with Pratt.”
“Not until the constabulary arrives,” Lizzy replied firmly. “I will not quit the scene until I know how things stand with Mr. Collingforth. I am in part responsible for his discomfiture, but I thought it necessary to speak.”
“Undoubtedly. You did well. Jane!”
“Yes, Neddie?” I joined them in a moment.
“I should dearly love another pair of eyes. If you and Lizzy would return to the coach, and from that vantage survey the crowd for anything untoward — the slightest detail that might seem amiss — it should be as gold.”
“With alacrity,” I said, and slipped my hand through Lizzy's arm.
“And now, Mr. Collingforth,” Neddie said, as we turned away, “I must ask leave to search your chaise. Stand aside, Mr. Everett!”
“WHAT A CURIOUS LIGHT THIS SHEDS UPON ONE'S neighbours, to be sure.” Lizzy sighed, as her green eyes roved intendy over the equipages drawn up helter-skelter near our own. “There is Mr. Hayes, bustling all his party into a closed carriage, and intent upon his return to Ashford. He will not stay a moment, even in respect of the dead — the chance at seizing a clear road before his fellows is too tempting to be missed. Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton is pretending to an indisposition. See her there, with her kerchief over her face? I suppose I brought on a fit, by descending from my barouche and approaching the corpse. What a comfort that we need not be so nice, when Lady Elizabeth is on display!”
“I admired your activity, Mrs. Austen,” Miss Sharpe said suddenly. “I wished that I might imitate it. That dreadful man required an answer!”
“You observed the lady to enter his chaise as well?”
“Yes,” the governess replied, her eyes averted, “but I did not remark her leaving it. I cannot recollect the slightest instance of her passing, in fact, until the moment that litde Fanny espied her at the rail — mounted on the black horse, and at the very moment of joining the fray. I shall not soon forget that.”
“Nor any of the day's events, I am sure,” Lizzy replied. “It is quite an introduction, Miss Sharpe, to the elegant delights of Canterbury Race Week. I am sure your friends the Portermans will be appalled, when they hear of it, and shall request your immediate return to London.”
Anne Sharpe glanced up at her mistress swiftly, then dropped her eyes once more to the little chapbook.
“I cannot tell the answer to your riddle, Sharpie,” said Fanny fretfully, “and I am very hot and tired. When will Papa be done?”
“In a little while, my dear,” her mother said, “in but a very little while. Lay your head upon my lap, if you choose, and endeavour to sleep.”
While my sister smoothed her daughter's curls, I surveyed the milling crowd.[10] Several of the parties had no intention of awaiting the constabulary, as Lizzy had said. A clutch of horses and harness clogged the gates of the meeting-grounds, and it should be hours, perhaps, before the turf was cleared.
“Tell me of Mr. Collingforth, Lizzy,” I said softly.
“Collingforth? He is of no very great account, I assure you. Nothing to do with the Suffolk family, you know — a lateral heir, in the maternal line, who took the name upon his accession to the property.”
“Yes, yes — but what sort of character does he possess? Is he the sort of man to conceal a fresh corpse in his carriage?”
“I cannot fathom why any man should do so, Jane,” Lizzy retorted in exasperation, “much less contrive to discover it himself. Either he is very simple, or very devious, indeed — and my mind at present is divided between the two.”
“He seems to hate Mrs. Grey.”
She smiled mirthlessly. “Love often turns to hate, I believe — particularly when it is formed of obsessive passion. Six months ago, perhaps, Mr. Collingforth was very much in Mrs. Grey's pocket. But she tired of him, as she does of so many, and sent him on his way.”
“And the affair was countenanced by Society?” I enquired.
“Society, as you would style it, took no notice of either Mrs. Grey or Collingforth. Whatever their form of intimacy, it was quite without the pale of Canterbury fashion. Only Lady Forbes — the wife of the commanding General of the Coldstream Guards — condescended to visit Mrs. Grey after her first weeks in Kent, once the measure of her style had been taken; and Lady Forbes is very young, and cannot be trusted to know any better.”
“I see. You said she tired of any number of gentlemen. A motive, perhaps, for her brutal end?”
“Perhaps.” Lizzy's slanting green eyes rounded upon me. “My brother must be considered one of them, Jane— Mrs. Grey had him quite wrapped around her little finger — and Captain Woodford, of course. He has been intimate from boyhood with Mr. Valentine Grey, and has frequently called at The Larches.”
I glanced at Miss Sharpe's sleek, dark head; her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be dozing. I lowered my voice all the same. “You heard what Mr. Collingforth said of your brother?”
“In company with most of Kent. I wonder where the blackguard has got to? I would dearly love to know what Collingforth meant by accosting him in that fashion, just before the body was discovered. There is something ugly between them, and Woodford, too, if I am any judge of appearances; and such things are so tiresome when they are thrown in the public eye. How I long to shake brother Edward until his teeth rattle in his head!”
Our interesting discourse was broken at that moment by the arrival of the Canterbury constabulary, come at a gallop, it seemed, from town. They brought in their train a waggon draped in black; I knew it at once for a makeshift hearse.
Neddie strode to meet them; consulted, for a moment, with the man who seemed to be their principal; and this last commenced to bark out orders, dispatching some of his fellows in one direction, and some in another. A few made immediately for the Collingforth chaise.
10
It was common in Austen's day to refer to relations by marriage as though they were relations of blood. Although the term