Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd [114]
When the service was concluded, the gentlemen rose to accompany the coffins down into the family vault, and the assembled mourners waited in respectful silence; a silence broken only by the quiet weeping of Evans, and the whispered words of comfort offered by the housekeeper. Several minutes elapsed before Sir Thomas reappeared, his own face as white as if iced over by death. His halting progress down the aisle, supported by his son, was pitiful to see, and Maddox wondered whether the old gentleman’s health might never recover from the series of shocks he had sustained. Maddox was one of the last of the mourners to attain the door, and what he saw outside did not surprise him: there was a crowd of people thronging the churchyard, but both Henry Crawford and his sister were gone.
The knell was still tolling behind her as Mary made her way quickly to the rear gate of the White House. She had only visited the house once, quite early in her stay at the parsonage, but she remembered it very clearly, having spent an extremely tedious hour being taken through every room by Mrs Norris, who did not scruple to point out every chair, table, silver fork, and finger-glass, and who could enumerate the price of every item with as much facility as an agent shewing the house to a prospective tenant. Henry had warned her to remain out of sight until she saw him on the terrace with Stornaway; the man was said to be partial to snuff, when he could get it, and Henry had still a plentiful supply of fine Macouba that he had purchased in St James’s. It was hardly subtle, by way of a bribe, and should the man prove suspicious, Henry was not at all sure how he was to explain his sudden presence in the house; if pressed, he intended to claim he bore a message from Sir Thomas, enquiring as to the arrangements for Mr Norris’s removal, but it was, at best, a poor excuse, as any astute sentinel would know; they must hope that Maddox chose his subalterns for their physical not their mental prowess.
The minutes passed slowly by, and Mary began to fear that the White House servants would return long before she would have the opportunity to see Edmund; but just at the moment when she was about to give up hope, the door opened and she saw her brother and Stornaway emerge onto the terrace. Her heart was by this time beating so hard and so quick, that she could scarcely draw breath, far less move, but move she must; there was no time to be lost. She waited until the two men had disappeared round the side of the house, then slipped up the garden path, and through the open door into the drawing-room. She could hardly believe that she had actually attained the house without being detected, and stood motionless on the threshold, hardly knowing what to do next. She and Henry had spent so long discussing how she might gain access to the house, that they had barely touched upon what she should do once she had achieved it. But her customary self-possession did not fail her; she went quickly to the door, and stood in the hall, listening intently. At first the whole house seemed utterly quiet, but as her senses adjusted to the silence, she perceived that there was a strange, low, rasping sound emanating from a room quite close by; were it not for the time of day, she might have supposed there was someone sleeping there. She crept softly along the hall and stopped at the foot of the staircase; to her left the breakfast-parlour, to her right the dining-room, its door standing