Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [87]
The Lieutenant forced a smile. “I am accustomed, from years of army service, to disposing of the belongings of the men in my company when they happen to be killed,” he told me. “It is as second nature to me, to consider the family left behind, and their solicitude for the fate of their loved ones. Often the belongings are precious to them, however little value they might have for us.”
“But—forgive me, Lieutenant—the maid was not of your company, exactly. She was rather of Isobel's. How did you come to know where her things were to be found? For surely none of the household knew that she had sought shelter from Lizzy Scratch.”
He coloured at this, and was silent a moment. “I might ask the same of you, Miss Austen,” he said, “for assuredly you know more of my movements than I should have thought usual for a young lady of discretion. But it is of no matter—my greater knowledge of the maid is due only to a greater tendency to dissipation. “At this, he grinned ruefully. “When I can abide my brother's silences no longer I hie me to the Cock and Bull; and at the Cock and Bull, Marguerite's new lodgings were commonly known.”
I looked my surprise. “Yet you told Isobel nothing of this?”
“You must recollect that I had no reason to do so,” he protested. “When the maid first disappeared from the Manor, Isobel said nothing that suggested she should be found; and I thought Marguerite's departure nothing more than a falling-out between herself and her mistress. Of the letters, and the threats they contained, I learned only with the rest of the household; and by that time, the poor girl was dead.”
The story was plausible enough. “But you have not sent the things to the Barbadoes?”
“I had only to request the address of Isobel, and the deed was done; but events have intervened. It was well for me that I did not, for Sir William Reynolds would view the maid's belongings after the inquest yesterday, and came to me much as you have done. But he learned nothing of use to him, by all appearances, and bade me send them on to the girl's family.” Tom Hearst paused, and studied me closely. “It is exceedingly good of the Countess to consider the affairs of her maid when her own are in such a state.”
Particularly when the maid has been the cause of her own ruin. The thought, though unspoken, hung in the air between us.
“That is ever Isobel's way,” I said lamely, “and perhaps concerning herself with such small matters relieves her of her cares.”
“Perhaps.” The Lieutenant attempted to resurrect his usual good humour. “I shall have Joan fetch the things directly.”
I HAVE MUCH TIME TO CONSIDER LIEUTENANT HEARST'S words as the Scargrave carriage rattles on to London, and have drawn out my journal in an effort to write my way towards a better understanding of what they may mean. The journey will last several hours, unrelieved of the tedium of conversing with Fanny Delahoussaye and her mother; Isobel and Fitzroy Payne are conveyed separately, under armed guard, in a discomfort and shame I shudder to contemplate. That this is only the beginning of the indignities they shall endure, I fully understand, and quail at the responsibility with which Isobel has charged me.
The Scargrave tangle becomes more tenebrous with the passing hours, and were I a creature prone to violent emotion, I should despair of ever making sense of it. That the lives of Isobel and die Earl hang in the balance only heightens my impatience with my own understanding. Where I seek for intelligence, in hopes of throwing light upon the puzzle, I find only greater obscurity; and my visit to the Hearst brothers’ cottage is no exception.
For though Lizzy Scratch avowed that she had placed the maid's locket in the batman's keeping, it was not among Marguerite's possessions when Tom Hearst turned them over to me. In the cloth bag I received from the cottage housemaid were a few items of worn clothing; a packet of letters in French from Marguerite's relations in the Indies; and a miniature of a woman who might have been her mother. That was all—no books, no trinkets, no keepsakes