did—no real proof Thane’s a bad’un—and besides, girl’s dead.
“Was Captain MacCallister aware of Thane’s interest in that quarter?”
“The Captain doesn’t chuse to meddle with Thane,” Jupiter said succinctly. “Ask me, he meant to get his fair lady away from the household as soon as possible, and leave the dirty dishes behind. Trouble is, plan went awry. Fair lady’s in gaol. Captain’s up to his neck in dirty dishes.”
I sighed and glanced at Fanny. “Is Julian Thane
Jupiter smiled crookedly, his countenance suffused with a shrewd self-knowledge. “Don’t like the fellow above half, ma’am. Too dashing for his own good, and cuts me out with your niece whenever he sees the chance. So take anything I chuse to say with a grain of salt. Must wonder, all the same, why we came up with him this morning near that coppice.”
“The girl had been killed hours before,” I reminded him, gently.
“Know it. What I mean to say is: Looks like he’d been intending to meet her there.”
I thought of the young man on the plunging black horse, halted on the path by the coppice, and the dog yapping at his feet. When we came up with him, he had been eager to turn us back—and ready with his tale of a visit to Fanny. I had wondered how Thane could contemplate such an errand—however charming he found my niece—when it was Fanny’s people who had placed his sister in gaol.
“Reckon the coppice was a habit of theirs,” Jupiter said wisely. “Stands to reason somebody besides Thane and Martha knew of it, too—and made use of the place for his own ends.”
I stared at him, my mind working. Jupiter might actually have seized on the truth. “You mean—”
He nodded. “Girl went happily enough to her death. Thought it was
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We cannot kick our heels, or make much fuss,
But emotions never fade, and that’s the truth.”
Thursday, 28 October 1813
As predicted, I passed a wretched night, the cold in my head coming on with force. By Wednesday morning, I was discovered by the housemaid in so feverish a state that Fanny was roused, and was made anxious enough to summon Susannah Sackree, the Knight family’s ancient nurse. Sackree hovered by my bedside in awful silence— awful for a loquacious old woman who stands not an inch over four feet, and is easily as wide—and pronounced me at death’s door.
“That Mr. Scudamore did ought to be sent for, miss,” she told Fanny, “but it’s doubtful as he’ll be able to do much for our Miss Jane, but ease the end.”
I might have burst out in laughter had my head ached less, and had I been less mindful (even on the verge of delirium) of Fanny’s history. A girl who has witnessed her own mother pass inexplicably from hearty good health to the coldness of a shroud, in the interval between dinner and bed, is never again to be remiss in summoning the apothecary. Indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Scudamore—reconciled or not to his scandalous wife—was rejected immediately in favour of a true physician, and a groom despatched with Miss Knight’s compliments, to summon Dr. Bredloe from his breakfast-parlour at Farnham.
By noon that much-tried man had pulled up in his gig and mounted the grand staircase at Godmersham, to be received by me in all the splendour of yellow walls and damask hangings, sneezing pitifully beneath my best lace cap.
“Foolish,” he said succinctly. “Very foolish, Miss Austen. You ought to have left that wretched girl to the manservant and been snug at home hours before you were. I shall be obliged to cup you, ma’am.”
“After all the blood-letting we have witnessed?” I protested feebly. But Bredloe would not be gainsaid—a basin and razor were produced, his frock coat discarded, and my vein opened.
I
To divert my mind from the distasteful business, I studied the view from my window—indifferent, it being another day of rain—and interrogated Bredloe.
“You succeeded in carrying Martha to Chilham?”
“She lies even now in the publick house in the village.”
“And the inquest is to be held—?”
“Tomorrow at noon, in the same place.”
“Must Fanny attend? It was she who discovered the body.”
“I cannot like to see Miss Knight in such a place,” Bredloe objected brusquely. “A distressful scene, for a young lady. And
“I could wish your brother were here, Miss Austen—but to delay the business is inadvisable, given the state of the corpse, and the fact that it must still travel some miles to Wold Hall for interment.”
The faint smell of blood dripping into the basin at my bedside, coupled with fever, conjured a fiendish image of the dead girl in my mind; I closed my eyes tightly and shuddered.
“Do not excite yourself with conjecture, Miss Austen. It can do you no good. Your pulse is tumultuous.”
“You intend to bring in a verdict of murder, I suppose?”
“—By Persons Unknown. There is nothing else to be done. The naming of the culprit I shall leave to Mr. Knight.”
At length, when I lay slack upon my pillows and attempted only with difficulty to keep my eyes open, the doctor pronounced himself satisfied, and ordered Sackree to set about composing a paregoric draught, which disgusting mixture I was required to drink down under Bredloe’s eye.
“You will sleep now,” he said confidently, “and provided there is no putrid sore throat, or inflammation of the lung, I think you will go on very well.”
Sackree snorted, her hands on her hips. The doctor cast her a jaundiced eye. “A little white wine whey in an hour, Nurse, and perhaps some restorative mutton broth.”
“Arrowroot jelly,” Sackree pronounced with finality, “and a hot mustard bath to the feet.”
“Not until after she has slept,” Bredloe returned, “and that, some hours.” He donned his frock coat and bowed.
“Sir,” I called hoarsely as he reached the door, “pray find out Mr. Finch-Hatton before you leave this house.”
“Finch-Hatton? —The Exquisite who made himself useful yesterday, in parading his horse about the Downs?”
I smiled weakly. “He is not unintelligent, I assure you. You might speak with him before your inquest. Jupiter—that is to say, Mr. Finch-Hatton—believes Martha and Julian Thane were in the habit of trysting in that coppice.”
“Thane, who is Mrs. MacCallister’s brother?”
I refused to waste energy on redundancies. “Were I you, Doctor, I should learn who
Bredloe stared at me some moments, his entire countenance alive with interest. Then he nodded once, and
