no falsehoods.”
“I would venture to say that you have spoken little else since arriving here,” declared Mr. Tilney. “To begin with, my brother could not possibly have received you here on Tuesday.”
He turned abruptly and crossed to a far door. He flung it open and strode rapidly through an antechamber to a set of pocket doors. These he slid wide. “Is this where you claim to have met with him just two days ago?”
They followed him into the grand drawing room. It was indeed the chamber where they had first met Captain Tilney — but much altered. Sheets, not candles, covered the table surfaces. They had been draped over all the furniture to protect it from dust and sunlight. The fireplace was swept so clean that it appeared disused for months. A small firescreen stood beside the hearth; the large one that had shielded the captain was nowhere in sight.
“This room was fully fitted out for use,” Darcy said. “As much so as the dining room and breakfast parlor.”
“You must consider me a poor host compared to my brother. I should have invited you to take refreshment, but those rooms appear the same as this. We can visit them, too, if you like,” Mr. Tilney said. “The state of this house contradicts your claims of what occurred here. My brother obviously has not entertained guests, or even resided here himself, for some time.”
Elizabeth pointed to a covered piece of furniture that, from its shape, must certainly have been the purple velvet chair the captain had occupied. It now rested some distance from the fireplace. “He was sitting in that chair. We conversed with him. On Wednesday.”
“Not unless you spoke with a spectre, Mrs. Darcy. Frederick died far from here, accidentally killed in a training exercise with his regiment. According to his commander, he died the very day he suffered injury. Though the dispatch reached us only this morning, it was dated well before Wednesday.”
“If the gentleman we met was not Captain Tilney, then with whom were we here?” Darcy asked.
“A good question, Mr. Darcy — with whom
“We did not steal the diamonds. Indeed, we are as much victims of this fraud as you. Someone has conspired to make us appear guilty — lured us here under false pretenses, replaced my walking stick with a duplicate, deposited the diamonds within it. Do not you”—Darcy turned from Mr. Tilney—”or
“If there was a conspiracy, you were part of it,” said Mr. Melbourne. “It is terribly convenient, all of this happening while the servants are gone, nobody who can confirm your story — nobody who witnessed what you did. Except for whoever wrote the letter Mr. Chase received.”
“That the letter is anonymous supports my claim. Has it not occurred to you that the very person who planted the diamonds could have also written the letter? Is not Mr. Chase’s having received it ‘terribly convenient’? Please — all of you, consult your reason. I am a gentleman with an estate, a family, and a reputation to protect. Why would I risk them all for a set of jewels?”
“I do not know, Mr. Darcy,” said Henry Tilney. “But then, I do not know you.” Something on the floor caught Mr. Tilney’s gaze. He reached down and picked up a dry oak leaf. “Did Frederick? Were you even acquainted with my brother?”
Damning as it would sound, he could not speak other than the truth. “I was not.”
“Then on what pretext did you come here?”
“My late mother enjoyed the friendship of yours. Captain Tilney invited me here in their memory.”
He cast Darcy a dubious look. “That does not sound like Frederick.” Mr. Tilney suddenly looked very tired. “Mr. Melbourne, thank you for returning the diamonds. If you will excuse me, the day grows short, and I need to make arrangements for my brother’s memorial service.”
“Of course, Mr. Tilney. Forgive us for taking up so much of your time.” He motioned toward the door with the walking stick. Darcy had grown to detest the sight of it. “Come along, Mr. Darcy. It’s back to gaol for you.”
“You cannot be serious!”
“I am quite serious.”
“After everything we have just learned?”
“I have learned nothing to convince me of your innocence. Something peculiar occurred here — that is certain — but I am going to let the judge sort it out.”
A judge. Please God, let it be someone who holds his position on merit. Someone intelligent enough to recognize that Darcy and Elizabeth were targets, not the perpetrators, of this bizarre affair.
“How soon may this matter be presented to the court? Can we resolve it soon?” Darcy began to calculate how quickly Mr. Harper could be contacted. The solicitor would need to engage a barrister on their behalf to argue their case at the bar.
Mr. Melbourne barked out a laugh. “The assize judge has just come and gone through Gloucestershire. It will be spring before he returns for you to stand trial.”
“Consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained... Could they be perpetuated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”
Elizabeth and Darcy managed to snatch a minute’s private speech as Mr. Melbourne took leave of Mr. Tilney.
“The moment you return to the inn, write to Mr. Harper,” Darcy said. “Advise him of this calamity and call him here straightaway.”
She nodded dutifully, grateful she would have a useful task to occupy her when the magistrate’s carriage left her at the Golden Crown and departed with Darcy still inside. The thought of him spending even one more night in gaol was too awful to contemplate. “Have you his address in France?” she asked.
“No — as we were ourselves in transit from Bath, he was to direct all communication to Pemberley. But his clerk will know where he can be found.” He gave her the solicitor’s London address. “Send the letter express to his office with instructions to forward it by the swiftest possible means.”
Tense silence dominated the journey back to the inn. The presence of Mr. Melbourne stifled conversation between husband and wife, and Darcy fell into a state of deliberation so deep that Elizabeth doubted she could have elicited more than one-word responses from him had she tried. She passed the time in meditation of her own, attempting to comprehend how a crisis of this magnitude had sprung into being in so little time.
Who could ever have suspected that a simple invitation to renew an old acquaintance would lead to their potential ruin? But the entire visit had been an elaborate hoax, and all the evidence had vanished with the imposters. The only tangible reminders of that night at Northanger were the diamonds themselves.
Had the jewels been left in Mrs. Tilney’s apartment in the first place to tempt them? And then, she and Darcy not taking them on their own, planted in the duplicate walking stick? In whatever manner the diamonds were originally intended to find their way out of Northanger, obviously Mr. Chase had been meant to find them.
Or had he? Darcy believed the author of the anonymous letter and the person who had hidden the diamonds were one and the same, but what if they were not? Had someone wanted to get the diamonds out of the house — either to be discovered by Darcy upon realizing the canes had been switched, or secretly collected later by their concealer — only to be thwarted by the letter writer?
To Elizabeth’s admittedly inexperienced eye, the necklace, bracelet, and eardrops comprised a lovely set but nothing extraordinary. For a family as wealthy as the Tilneys appeared, the sentimental value of the diamonds likely equaled or exceeded their monetary worth. They had belonged to a departed mother, one who had been friends with Darcy’s own.
