Jane and the Canterbury Tale

28 October 1813, Cont.

As Fanny and I tooled for home behind a rowan longing to be once more in his stall, we espied a horseman galloping towards us along the Canterbury road—a rider revealed in a few moments as none other than the reviled Magistrate.

“Papa!” Fanny cried. “How glad I am to see you!”

“You have been to Chilham?” he enquired, reining in his mount. “You will have learnt the news?”

“Indeed—and most distressing we found it,” I said.

“I am even now on my way to consult with Mr. Wildman. Do not wait dinner for my return, Fanny—you and your aunt might enjoy a comfortable coze by the fire in the absence of visitors. I shall take a cold collation once I am at home.”

A comfortable coze. With a girl of twenty whose most romantickal notions had been brutally overthrown. My heart sank.

“Papa!”

Edward checked his horse and glanced down at his daughter. Her gloved hands were working at Rowan’s reins. “Is it certain? There can be no mistake?”

Edward’s lips compressed at the desperate entreaty in her voice. “I am sorry, Fanny. Thane denies it all—but the evidence is black against him. We must allow the Assizes to weigh the case; we must allow Justice to run its course.”

“Do you not ask yourself,” I interjected as my brother’s horse danced impatience beneath him, “why any man should be fool enough to commit a second murder in the very teeth of your investigation? —A murder, moreover, done from personal motives that may be entirely unconnected to the Curzon Fiske case?”

“I imagine he did not intend to kill the girl. It was an act no doubt committed in a fit of passion.”

“Nonsense! Nobody lures a maid to that lonely coppice with the note found in her pocket, and slits her neck with a knife he then prudently carries away—without premeditation. But to plan a murder, when the neighbouring magistrate has already incarcerated one’s sister, is utter madness! I cannot believe Thane fool enough to do it.”

“What would you say, Jane?” Edward demanded wearily. “Do not speak in riddles, pray.”

I sighed. There is so much that must be explained to men. “Merely that had Thane wished to end the life of his mistress and bastard child, he might have done so at any time—preferably a month from now, in another locale entirely, when he was no longer so blatantly beneath your scrutiny. In short, the evidence may be black against him—but the evidence does not make sense.”

“Am I then to ignore the button and note—both Thane’s—that were found on Martha’s person?”

I shrugged as Edward’s horse tossed its head and neighed. “Martha’s killer clearly wore Thane’s drab shooting coat. But Thane himself was not wearing it when Fanny and I met with him on the Downs.”

“That is true!” Fanny cried eagerly. “He wore his black coat and leather breeches, with top boots—I particularly remarked the white cuff, so like that which Mr. Beau Brummell is supposed to wear. I thought it excessively dashing.”

“The gush of blood from a slit throat should seriously stain the white tops of those boots,” I murmured, “but perhaps Thane exchanged his murderous attire in the interval between killing the girl and returning to search her pockets some hours later. One imagines, however, that his bloodied clothes—including the interesting coat of drab—should then have been found in his bedchamber. Do you not see, Edward, that anyone at the Castle might have taken Thane’s shooting coat from the gun room, as Thane’s mother told us only an hour since? And disposed of it when the deed was done? As for the note—I have it on the authority of the Chilham housekeeper that Martha was forever tucking letters into her apron pocket. Thane might have pressed that summons upon her at any time—it might indeed refer to an altogether different meeting, some days past. There was no date on the paper, I collect?”

“There was not.” Edward gazed at me with an arrested expression. “Must you always complicate matters, Jane, with questions that are entirely unanswerable?”

“Two people have died, Edward, and died in pain and violence. I should like the proper person to hang for it.”

He frowned. “You are persuaded the murders were done by the same hand. Whose, then? Sir Davie Myrrh’s? Burbage’s? Explain, if you may, how either man should have come by the shooting coat of drab. Neither has been seen in the neighbourhood of Chilham, much less the Castle’s gun room, of late.”

“Have you had any word of them?”

“Burbage was taken this morning in Deal,” Edward said abruptly, “attempting to hire a private vessel for the crossing to France. He should be conveyed to Canterbury gaol by nightfall. Sir Davie, I regret, is still at large.”

“Then you may pursue your researches yet a few hours,” I assured him affably. “We have delayed you already too long, with our vexing questions. May I suggest, Edward—when you speak to Old Wildman—that you enquire most narrowly into the terms of his Will, and the disposition of his estate, in the sad event of his death?”

“Naturally the whole shall go to his son,” he retorted impatiently.

“I meant, rather, in default of heirs male.”

My brother stared at me, brows knit, then wheeled his horse towards Chilham without another word.

We were not very gay that evening, I confess, despite the luxury of a house emptied of visitors and sporting-mad young gentlemen. We invited Miss Clewes to make a third at table, and toyed with the excellent fowl presented by Cook; in my lowered health and Fanny’s lowered spirits, the cream soup was more to our liking. Miss Clewes shared her stories of the little girls, and the morning spent in the schoolroom, and the droll thing that Marianne had said, and how she had been obliged to deny Marianne her custard in consequence; but neither Fanny nor I were properly attending. Before the governess, who knew nothing of the day’s events, we could not speak of murder or Julian Thane; but Miss Clewes’s prattle allowed each of us to pursue our own unsettling thoughts: Fanny’s, on the subtleties of handsome young men, about whose true proclivities no gently-reared female could presume to know anything; and I, on the hidden and deadly purposes of the human heart. We were so much abstracted that we did not devour above a fraction of the delicacies set before us, I am sure; but I comforted myself, and dosed the cold threatening to o’erwhelm my head, with Edward’s delicious claret. I shall be sadly spoilt by the time I return home, and disdain the fruits of Cassandra’s stillroom as not worth drinking.

“And is your papa expected this evening, Miss Knight?” Miss Clewes enquired brightly. “If you mean to wait up for him, I shall be happy to fetch my work-box, and sit with you a little in the drawing-room. Only I must first assure myself that the young ones are comfortable in the night-nursery. They will be wanting their warm milk.”

Fanny coloured slightly, and looked down at her hands. “I fear that I have the head-ache, Miss Clewes. I should like to retire early. And my aunt is most unwell.”

“Of course you have the head-ache!” Miss Clewes said archly. “For Mr. Finch- Hatton has left us, has he not? And it is a wonder that even little Lizzy is not drooping apace! How dull we shall be this week, to be sure, until some other of your beaux, Miss Knight, appear to cheer our solitude!”

The colour in Fanny’s cheeks deepened. “I have no beaux, Miss Clewes, and indeed I can find little to enjoy in the society of young men,” she retorted crisply. “There is a want of … of … openness, and much of calculated deceit, in the general run of that sex. Goodnight.”

Miss Clewes looked bewildered, and curtseyed her adieux; I pressed her hand and shook my head warningly. Then I caught up to Fanny as she ascended the stairs with more haste than grace.

“Take care, my dear,” I murmured as I kissed her cheek. “That was a speech that smacked strongly of disappointment. You should not wish to expose yourself to the ridicule of the world, for ruined hopes.”