behind—and the breath of scandal is never far from the story. I simply do not have an inkling as to what occurred on that dreadful night, Aunt, when he disappeared—”

“You make it sound like a horrid novel, my dear,” I retorted, amused.

“But it was! A sudden removal from the Fiskes’ home, and an abrupt arrival at Chilham, on the bitterest of January nights, when the wind and snow howled. The duns were at the Fiskes’ very door, they said, and the lease on their house in receivers’ hands. Of course Old Mr. Wildman took them in, tho’ James has said his father could not like it; and what should Curzon Fiske do, but set to drinking claret at a furious rate, and challenging all the gentlemen present to whist for pound points—when everyone knew he had barely a shilling to his name!”

“You were not of the party at Chilham on that occasion, I collect? What year would it have been— 1810?”

“I was not present,” Fanny admitted in a grudging tone, “and neither were my brothers, being as yet schoolboys at Winchester—but Jupiter Finch-Hatton knows what occurred, and it was from him I had some part of the story.”

“Very well. What does Jupiter say happened next?”

Fanny leaned towards me with a conspirator’s air. “The gentlemen—Jupiter and James and Mr. Plumptre, who was then but eighteen—agreed to play at whist with Curzon Fiske. Jupiter insists it was in an effort to bring some peace to Mrs. Fiske—Mrs. MacCallister, I should say—because her aspect was so wild and distraught, and her husband would do little to comfort her.”

“And?”

“And … I do not know what happened next,” Fanny admitted, with a flattened expression. “Only that Jupiter turned owlish and cagey, and quite knowing beyond what anyone might bear, so that I was out of reason cross, and lost all patience with him.”

I sighed.

“When a person who has been frank turns to evasions and hints,” Fanny insisted with asperity, “there is nothing to be done but to ignore him. Anything more would be to reward quite tiresome behaviour.”

“Undoubtedly. And yet you say that Curzon Fiske left Chilham. And without his wife.”

“There was some sort of row that night, I think,” Fanny offered with a pretty knitting of her brows, “all the gentlemen having dipped quite deep into the claret. Perhaps the quarrel regarded the winnings, or pound points.”

Or perhaps, I thought, it was to do with Adelaide. For certainly Curzon Fiske did not take her with him, when he fled England for the last time.

“In any case,” Fanny persisted, “Mr. Fiske was gone from Chilham by morning, leaving a note he was bound for India; and Mrs. Fiske was abandoned to the charity of her cousins.”

“Poor woman! And she only one-and-twenty!”

Fanny shrugged. “She thoroughly enjoyed her career as an Adventuress well enough while it lasted, so one cannot entirely pity her—but I believe the Wildmans treated her with considerable kindness. They even repaired the broken relations that had obtained between Adelaide and her mother, so that Mrs. Fiske was received once more into Mrs. Thane’s house. Her fine clothes and jewels and other belongings were seized by her husband’s creditors; but she lived so quietly and respectably, and the Wildmans backed her so nobly, that her reputation was restored, in time.”

“Three years since,” I mused, “and she had no word of Curzon Fiske?”

“Not until the report of his death was received,” Fanny concurred. “We learnt the news of James Wildman, when he rode over one pleasant afternoon in April last year—some eighteen months ago, now. A fever, it was said, contracted while Fiske was in the service of the Honourable East India Company—and the body had been buried in Ceylon.”

“And so Mrs. Fiske was released of her onerous wedding vows, put on her mourning-clothes, and after a decent interval, was permitted to re-enter Society.”

“Where, at the age of four-and-twenty, she was so happy as to make the acquaintance of one Captain Andrew MacCallister,” Fanny concluded.

Andrew MacCallister. How much did he know, I wondered, of his wife’s storied past? Or the nature of her first attachment? And what would be his astonishment, upon learning that Curzon Fiske—so far from having released Adelaide to her happy future—had thrown his dark shadow over her vows, and made of her a bigamist?

Chapter Eight 

The Tamarind Seed

You must have seen, and more than once, one face

In a crowd, so white, so pale, you knew at the sight

This man was walking to death, and could not escape.…

Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Man Of Law’s Tale”

21 October 1813, Cont.

“Jane,” my brother Edward called from The Great Hall as Fanny and I prepared to descend the stairs, “Dr. Bredloe has finished his examination of the corpse, and is partaking of refreshment in the drawing-room. I should be grateful if you would join us there.”

“I am sure Mr. Wildman has finished writing what must be conveyed to Captain and Mrs. MacCallister,” I murmured to Fanny, “however little he may have relished the task; and there is the Express to be despatched in pursuit of the pair. Pray inform Mr. Wildman, therefore, that he is not to stay for us; we might better pay our respects to his family tomorrow, when the unhappy couple is returned to Chilham Castle.”

An interval of reflection had convinced me of the usefulness of observing Adelaide MacCallister in the bosom of her family—and therefore, to visit that family prior to the lady’s return could afford me little interest. The day was already so advanced as to make the sacrifice of a carriage ride to our neighbours insignificant; my time should be better devoted to my brother and the coroner.

“I know very well that you and Papa mean to conspire,” Fanny said archly, “and that I am wanted in the drawing-room not at all—” But she went on her errand without further demur.

Dr. Bredloe was a little man, with sandy hair that I guessed had once been as red as Andrew MacCallister’s. The doctor was a neat figure in his black coat and clubbed queue, the very picture of professional wisdom. He set down his glass of Madeira at my appearance and sprang up from his perch on the drawing-room settee, which was still covered in the elegant damask Elizabeth had chosen long ago. If I wondered at Edward’s conveying the coroner to such an apartment, rather than the more masculine comforts of the library, the conviction that the prosy clergyman Mr. Moore might be in possession of the latter explained our sudden formality.

“Miss Austen, I presume?”

“Dr. Bredloe.” I curtseyed. “My brother, I find, reposes the utmost confidence in your judgement. How fortunate that you were not otherwise engaged this morning, when need summoned you!”

He bowed and offered me a chair, which I immediately took. The coroner then seated himself once more on the slippery surface of the settee. Edward stood by the fire, one boot resting on the fender, his blue eyes surveying us inscrutably.

“Your brother,” Dr. Bredloe observed, “reposes a curious confidence in you, Miss Austen—dating, I collect, from your conduct during an affair of murder that occurred prior to my coming into Kent.”

I glanced at Edward; if he had indeed related some part of the activities of Jupiter Finch-Hatton’s mysterious uncle, and the brutal murder of a young woman at the Canterbury race-meeting some years ago, he had decided unequivocally to take both Dr. Bredloe and myself into the confidence of the Law[4]

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