“It was eclipsed by the shade of a riding-hat, complete with veil, and could tell me nothing; but I remember that her hair was dark as a raven's wing.”
“How dashing of you,” I murmured. “You betray a poetic turn in your account, Mr. Brett, that is excessively gratifying. And Mr. So they? Did he follow the lady?”
“I watched the door for several moments, but he did not appear; and the housekeeper soon discovering me still upon the premises, I did not like to linger. I called for my horse, all alive to the possibility that So they must return to the house at the stable lad's activity; but, however, he did not.”
“And so you believe Mrs. Grey to have learned of Sothey's liaison with an unknown woman,” I mused, “and to have broken with him on the very day of her death.”
“Can there be any other construction placed upon events?” Mr. Brett enquired.
I was silent, but my gaze would seek out the clear-eyed countenance of the landscape designer. He was a puzzling gentleman, indeed. I knew little of him, for good or ill — but I thought that there had been nobility in his looks, as Mrs. Grey's whip lashed down upon his neck. Animation and honest pleasure, too, as he spoke of the Picturesque; a lively intelligence, an informed mind. He might charm a thousand ladies less keen in their reserve than myself — and yet he had certainly charmed me. Nowhere had I detected a desire to impose, a false posturing, the telltale marks of deceit.
And if Mr. Sothey were entangled in the Greys' deadly game — why, then, was Mr. Collingforth fled to the Continent? Had the improver arranged appearances to his liking, and burdened an innocent man with the blame? I must know more of Julian Sothey before I might be able to measure his talents; and happily, Fate obliged.
Chapter 15
A Dangerous Correspondence
23 August 1805, cont'd.
“LIZZY, DEAREST,” MY BROTHER EDWARD SAID, AS WE were settled into our carriage some hours later, “I quite liked the Gentleman Improver. He is a man of information and taste.”
“Not at all what one would expect of Eastwell Park,” Lizzy replied.
“Then perhaps he shall prove the salvation of it. Did you admire his plans?”
“—The cunning little Blue Book? I thought it quite ravishing, Neddie. I long to have one of my own.”
“How delightful. Then you will not object if he rides over to Godmersham one day or another?”
“I object to nothing, provided he leaves our avenue in peace.”
“Excellent,” Neddie returned comfortably. “I invited him for Sunday. We have never very much to do then, as you know, and might as well spend it in walking about the park as not.”
Lizzy settled back against the seat cushions, a dim perfection in the wan moonlight creeping into the carriage; only the creak of the springs and the steady beat of the horses' hooves served to disturb the darkness.
“And you, Jane?” Neddie enquired at length. “Do you despise Mr. Sothey as much as Humphrey Repton?”
“I cannot despise a man of whom I know so little.”
“Then this is indeed a reformed Jane!” Henry cried. “I have known you to despise an hundred such at first meeting, for nothing more than a poorly-turned phrase.”
“Jane is always cautious when she possesses a dangerous knowledge,” Lizzy observed from her corner. “She has detected Mr. Sothey in an indiscretion.”
“Have you?” Neddie's voice acquired something more of interest. “Then pray offer it to the general view. My work as Justice should be nothing at all, without a few well-placed indiscretions.”
And so I related not only the history of Mrs. Grey's riding crop, but also of Mr. Brett's dubious intelligence regarding the woman in The Larches stableyard, and Sothey's disheveled arrival at Eastwell the evening of the race-meeting.
“You employed your time to better effect than I,” my brother observed drily, “for all I learned from Sothey was that he has no interest in the Gothic, and finds the Hermit Cottage a wretched addition to the body of landscape architecture. But how ought we to regard this … indiscretion, if such it should be called? For as you have noted, Jane — the man should hardly have strangled Mrs. Grey in a fit of passion, did he precipitate a break in the first place. From your description of the lady's whip-hand, I should rather have expected to find Sothey stripped to his small clothes in Collingforth's chaise, than Mrs. Grey herself.”
“Collingforth's chaise,” Henry broke in. “Might it not have been Sothey the stable lad saw, entering the carriage?”
“We cannot judge the particulars on so slight an impression,” I countered, “nor yet on the evidence of a man like Mr. Brett. He is consumed by the desire to injure a rival — and jealousy working on a weak mind may produce every sort of evil. We must divine the truth as best we can. A direct approach to Sothey, however, is impossible at present; let it suffice to know him better by degrees.”
“Unhappily, we lack sufficient time,” Neddie said briskly. “Denys Collingforth is fled, and cannot feel the hangman's rope; but if I am not to appear a fool before my neighbours, and the Lord Lieutenant of Kent himself, I must conclude the matter swiftly. I would not have Collingforth charged guilty in Sothey's place — however charming the fellow's Blue Books — if he is guilty of having strangled Mrs. Grey.”
Trust Neddie to place his finger on the point.
“Then I would advise a visit to The Larches' stable-yard,” I told him. “One groom or another may have observed something to our advantage — Sothey's assignation with the unknown lady, or perhaps Mrs. Grey's discovery of it later.”
“Indeed,” Neddie said thoughtfully. “And as we are to pay our call of condolence at The Larches on the morrow, perhaps you, Henry, might manage a visit to the stables — being a notable devotee of the turf. I might profitably occupy Mr. Grey's attention, while you interrogate the grooms.”
But all thought of Mr. Sothey and The Larches was driven from our heads at our return to Godmersham. A constable had been stationed in the central hall some hours, patiently awaiting our arrival; and the news he bore was shocking in the extreme.
Denys Gollingforth had been found along the London road, a few miles from the town of Deal. His throat had been cut, his pockets emptied, and his body sunk with a stone at the bottom of a millpond. Two unfortunate boys, intent upon a swim, had discovered him there — to the horror of their mothers, and the routing of their sleep.
Saturday,
24 August 1805
MY OWN REPOSE WAS SIMILARLY BANISHED, AS THO' A spectral presence hovered about the bed curtains, its wakeful eye trained upon my tossing form. Lord Harold paraded through my dreams, arrayed in court dress and apparently deprived of the power of speech; my father, too, appeared as he had been in my earliest youth — a laughing, lively fellow who talked enough for ten. Perhaps it was his voice that so consumed Lord Harold's; he persisted in reading aloud from Oliver Goldsmith, to the persecution of my senses. I threw back the bedcovers at last, and sat up in the darkness; the great house was utterly still, but for the settling groan of its deepest timbers, and the whisper of a mouse in the wainscotting.
Had Lord Harold prevailed in Vienna? Was he even now upon the wing of his return? Were we likely ever to meet again?
And what of his intimate friend, Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton? A curious, deceptive, and engaging fellow. He had undertaken to sound my depths, during the course of dinner, for purposes as yet obscure; but I should dearly love to know his meaning. Besieged as he was with convivial relations, Mr. Emilious was unlikely to ride over from Eastwell before Monday, when I should be gone to Goodnestone Farm; that was most unlucky. I must put the gentleman and his intrigues entirely out of my mind.
Having done so, however, I found sleep no less destroyed by thought. From Eastwell Park it was but a step to our arrival at Godmersham, and the shocking intelligence of Collingforth's murder that had greeted us; and on this, my mind might well be occupied for the remainder of the night. Who had done away with Denys Collingforth? A footpad, encountered at random along the London road? The unsavoury black-clad friend, Mr. Everett, who had vanished from Canterbury without a trace? Or the self-same person who had struck down Mrs. Grey?