Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd [105]
‘And so, you left her?’ she said, gently.
‘To my everlasting shame. She did not leave me, I left her—left her alone in town, where she had no friend but me. My own wife. I only found out that she had gone when I had a letter from Mrs Jellett, asking me for the money owed on our lodgings. She had presumed—why should she not?—that Fanny had followed me to the address in Drury-lane I had confided to her. I knew better. I returned to Portman-square, and began to search for her. That part, at least, is true.’
‘And Enfield? I still cannot comprehend why you should have chosen to go there.’
‘It was the only place I could think of where I might hope for a moment’s peace and solitude—some where I might gain a little breathing time, while I prepared myself to face the Bertrams.’
He stopped and turned to face her, his face grey with unease. ‘All I can say is, that it did not seem such an injudicious choice then. But as a consequence I cannot prove I was not here in Mansfield when she arrived. I cannot prove I did not kill her. I cannot even say—with truth—that I did not want to be free of her; that I did not, in some small and shameful part of my heart, want her dead. Maddox has his motive, Mary, and he is gaining on me—he is closing in. If he does not soon find the true perpetrator of this crime, I am a dead man.’
CHAPTER XIX
Mary went to her bed that night in such an agony of mind as she had never yet suffered. The tumults of the last dreadful weeks were nothing to what she endured now; she had not known the human mind capable of bearing such vicissitudes. She saw, only too clearly, what she should do; it was not merely her knowledge of her brother that told her he was guiltless, but the words that she had heard from Julia Bertram’s own lips, and which no-one else would ever hear now, if she herself were not to communicate them. But was she prepared to take such a terrible step? Was she willing to send the man she loved to certain death on the gallows? Because that, she believed, would be the inevitable consequence of her disclosure. Henry might have more obvious motives for killing his wife, but she knew that some might consider Edmund Norris to have reasons that were scarcely less cogent, and he, like Henry, had no alibi for the morning of Fanny’s death.Were Julia Bertram’s last words to become generally known, the evidence against him would appear all but conclusive. It was an appalling prospect: say nothing, and watch her innocent brother condemned; speak, and see Edmund hang in his place.
She could not imagine any possibility of sleep, and lay awake for many hours, passing from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror, and from hot fits of fever to cold. But shortly before two o’clock her bodily weakness finally overcame her, and she slipped into a shallow and disturbed slumber, only to wake at dawn in a terror that made such an impression upon her, as almost to overpower her reason. She had fallen into a dark and wandering dream, in which she was barefoot, walking across the park, as the mist rose from the hollows, and the owls shrieked in the dark trees. All at once she found herself at the edge of the channel—the dank and fetid pit yawned beneath her very feet. She was overcome with fear, and dared not go any farther, but some thing drew her on, and she saw with revulsion that the body was still there at the bottom of the chasm, still wrapped in its crimson cloak and bloody dress, the face already rotting, and maggots eating at the suppurating flesh. She turned away, sickened, but Maddox stood behind her, and took hold of her arm, forcing her to look, forcing her to the very brink. And now she saw that Henry and Edmund were standing at either end of the trench—she saw them face each other, their countenances blank of all expression, then draw their