Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [91]
In seducing the maid to kill the Earl, and casting suspicion upon Fitzroy once Marguerite was forever silenced, Tom Hearst might hope to win the former Viscount's title and fortune, at the hand of his brother George. This seemed an elaborate sort of plot for a man more likely to act upon impulse, or in the heat of temper; but I could imagine how it was done. The Lieutenant had declared himself resident in London during the period of Isobel's brief courtship by his uncle, for it was then he had met Fanny Delahoussaye. He might have formed a liaison with Marguerite at the same time.
I considered how Tom Hearst's gliding step in the moonlit hall the previous midnight had reminded me of the spectral First Earl. Had the Lieutenant donned fancy dress and tip-toed past my door, all those nights ago at Scargrave Manor, the better to hide the Barbadoes nuts in Fitzroy Payne's gun case? Were he observed entering his cousin's room at that unlikely hour, the fact should be remembered when the nuts’ presence was discovered; but no one was likely to suggest that a ghost had incriminated the eighth Earl. And Tom Hearst had been at pains the next morning to reinforce my midnight impressions, by declaring that he had witnessed a similar visitation prior to his mother's death.
I reflected uneasily upon the Lieutenant's character. He was playful enough—and so unprincipled, I feared—as to regard the effect of fancy dress as a devilish good joke. I had no proof that he was the spectral impostor; however, and determined to halt the progress of my thoughts, in turning from the Lieutenant to his batman. Certainly one of the two had removed the maid's locket from her things, possibly because it contained his likeness. But which?
The batman, Jack Lewis, was of a station far closer to the maid's own. I considered that smart Cockney fellow, of the glad eye and shameless insolence, and decided he was the most likely to take a Creole girl strolling in Covent Garden. He was more likely than the Lieutenant, as well, to buy her a locket—and commit the indiscretion of placing his miniature inside.
And then a thought occurred to me. Jack Lewis need not have been the murderer of the Earl (who can hardly have been known to him), to be the thief of the pendant. Sorrowing at her death, the batman might readily have retrieved the girl's things from Lizzy Scratch, and then grown fearful at the sight of the bauble containing his likeness. Were it discovered, he was as good as hanged—or so he might have feared. And thus he secreted it somewhere about his person, and said nothing of its existence.
I must endeavour to find out whether I am right or no, at the nearest opportunity.
Which task to undertake first? Lord Harold Trowbridge, Rosie Ketch, or the batman, Jack Lewis? Since I should prefer the murderer to be Isobel's despicable foe before all others, it seemed best to assault his defences first; but I should need a greater weapon than our slight acquaintance if I were to breast the ramparts of Wilborough House. I bethought myself of Eliza, rose of a sudden from the brealcfast table, and sought my bonnet and cloak.
ELIZA, COMTESSE DE FEUILLIDE, IS MY BROTHER HENRY'S wife. She is also my cousin, being my father's sister's child, although reputedly not the daughter of my aunt's husband.3 All that is to say that Eliza was conceived in adulterous love, and my cousin has made it her metier from the day of her birth—being an accomplished flirt, a charming adventuress, one of the chief ornaments of Versailles before the fall of Marie Antoinette, and a cheat of the guillotine where her first husband, the Comte de Feuillide, was not. That sad gentleman's demise before the public executioner in 1794 left my bright Eliza returned to England and free to marry Henry some three years later. Though she is nearly ten years older than my favourite brother, and his union with her has been the subject of much unease in the family,