bear, so I have experience with suicide. I have never known a man to engage in firing practice beforehand. They are usually confident of succeeding.”
“Perhaps in the passion of the moment, he misfired on his first attempt, or the weapon discharged before he took aim.”
“Perhaps,” the colonel said. “When you discovered the loading materials, were they also near Mr. Crawford’s body?”
“We discovered no such materials,” Sir Thomas said. “They must have been with his horse.”
“His horse returned without anything at all,” Darcy said.
“Well, they must be somewhere,” said Mr. Stover. “Let us go have another look in the grove.”
The clearing appeared unchanged, with the notable exception of Mr. Crawford’s absence. The coroner had removed the body to examine it, and it was now being prepared for burial. Though the corpse was gone, its scent yet lingered, as did the impression in the grass from where it had lain so long.
The four gentlemen searched the grove for a powder flask, patch tin, spare balls — anything which would indicate that Mr. Crawford had reloaded his pistol as Sir Thomas insisted must have occurred. Darcy began his part of the quest where he had discovered the second patch, locating the rock over which he had nearly tripped, and working outward in a measured shuffle through the overgrowth. He found nothing.
The coroner circled the area surrounding the body impression while Sir Thomas wandered about halfheartedly kicking through brush that had accumulated at the foot of a wild gooseberry bush along the grove’s perimeter. Colonel Fitzwilliam, meanwhile, investigated the bases of a stand of birch trees about ten feet away from where Mr. Crawford had lain. Darcy grew impatient with the futility of their exercise. If reloading apparatus had ever been present, it was long gone.
He walked toward his cousin. Just as he neared, Colonel Fitzwilliam passed his fingertips over a splintered section of bark at approximately eye level on the side of one of the trees. At its center was a small hole.
“Have you found something of interest?” Darcy asked.
“Quite possibly.” He produced his folding knife and called for Sir Thomas and Mr. Stover to join them.
Several minutes’ application of knife to bark widened the hole sufficiently to pry out a misshapen, dark grey lump.
“It is not a spare ball, but a spent one,” the colonel said, “and appears to be of a caliber commensurate with the bore of the pistol. Sir Thomas, if I may?”
The magistrate did not offer the pistol, but his other hand, open and palm up.
Colonel Fitzwilliam surrendered the bullet. Sir Thomas held it to the crown of the muzzle. While impact with the tree had flattened one side, it appeared to be a match. “Mr. Stover, how large was the ball you removed from Mr. Crawford’s head?”
“Fifty-four, perhaps fifty-six. It is difficult to measure caliber precisely once a ball has been fired and hit a target. The bore of Mr. Crawford’s pistol is fifty-four. I am satisfied the ball that killed him came from this gun.”
“We now have both a patch and a ball from a second shot,” Darcy said, “yet no loading materials.”
“Darcy, would you show me exactly where you found the patch?” his cousin asked.
They paced out the short distance to the rock in the overgrown grass. At Colonel Fitzwilliam’s request, Sir Thomas finally handed over the pistol. The colonel sighted the weapon. “There is a direct line from the patch to the point of impact with the tree, at the proper angle to deduce it was fired from here. The body, however, does not fall within this line. It is too far to the side of the tree for the shot to have been aimed at Mr. Crawford where he was found — even if it flew wide, the angle of impact is wrong. Nor could Mr. Crawford have fired this shot into the trunk from his final position — the entry hole in the trunk was nearly opposite him. Either he fired into the tree from here, then moved to kill himself, or—”
“Or the shot that came from here was fired by someone else,” Darcy finished. “And most likely it was, because if Mr. Crawford fired both shots, he would have had to reload, and he had no means by which to do so.”
“The materials could have been taken from here after the fact,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “Or a second pistol, loaded at the same time — or at least with the same distinctive patches — was used.”
“How can you say there might have been a second pistol?” Sir Thomas said. “Both patches match the unique rifling of Mr. Crawford’s weapon.”
“It is distinctive but not necessarily unique,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Mr. Crawford’s pistol could have been commissioned as part of a cased set.” It was not uncommon for pistols, particularly custom weapons, to be sold in matched pairs, ostensibly for duels. If a contest of honor was not settled in the first round, the well-prepared owner then had an ancillary pistol at the ready so as not to suspend the duel in the heat of the moment to spend five minutes reloading. Not all cased sets were purchased in anticipation of actual duels; as with other goods collected by the wealthy, if owning one pistol was desirable, owning two was better still, and most pairs were used for improving one’s skill at target-shooting rather than defending one’s honor, if they were ever fired at all.
“Whether Mr. Crawford’s pistol has a twin, or is a single pistol that was fired and reloaded, something — the loading supplies or the second weapon — is missing from this grove that had to have been present at the time of Mr. Crawford’s demise,” Darcy said. “Which means someone else was in this grove before Mr. Crawford was discovered, and took with him the loading materials or the matching pistol. Either way, this individual was somehow involved in whatever event ended Mr. Crawford’s life. I should think that constitutes sufficient evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the probability of suicide.”
Sir Thomas stared at Darcy a long moment. At last he turned to the coroner. “What are your thoughts on the matter, Mr. Stover?”
“I am no longer confident in a suicide ruling. I will hold the inquest as planned; if no other information comes to light during it, I shall simply state the cause of death to be a close-range gunshot to the head, and the investigation into how that shot came to be fired can proceed from there.”
Sir Thomas appeared disappointed. “I had hoped this matter would be settled by your report. But very well. At least I shall be able to ship Mr. Crawford’s rotting remains out of Mansfield and back to Norfolk. Everingham is welcome to them.”
“Do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away, till you have given me the assurance I require.”
Mr. Archer had always reminded Elizabeth of an undertaker. However, she had assumed the solicitor’s undertakings were aboveboard.
Now she was not quite so certain.
As Elizabeth descended the stairs in search of Meg, who had not yet been informed of her husband’s death, she contemplated Lady Catherine’s solicitor more seriously. Of all the people she and Darcy had discussed as having motive for Henry Crawford’s murder, they had avoided the mention of one who almost certainly had wished him dead.
And Mr. Archer worked for her.
The thought that Lady Catherine had instructed her solicitor to eliminate her daughter’s seducer was absurd. Was it not? Darcy’s aunt was a titled aristocrat. The daughter of an earl. A landowner in her own right, a patroness of — well, of Mr. Collins, the realm’s most obsequious clergyman, but a patroness nevertheless. She might be domineering, she might think herself infallible on the subject of what was best for everybody else, she might be in the habit of bullying everyone around her until she got her own way. But such people as her ladyship — ladies with a capital L and the pedigree to support it — did not go round orchestrating assassinations.
Unless they were provoked beyond reason.
