Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (25 page)

were at a loss to name the caller. I waited for Sally to answer the summons, while Cassandra said with obvious satisfaction, "That will be Neddie perhaps. He was to dine in Alton with Mr.

Middleton, I believe, and will have escorted his tenant home."

"Seems a foolish thing to do," Henry observed, "when he might be comfortable with the port to be found in Barlow's cellars."

Mr. Prowting appeared in the dining-parlour doorway.

Behind him, hat in hand, stood Mr. Jack Hinton.

"Good evening, Mrs. Austen. I must beg your sincere par-don for incommoding you at this hour," the magistrate said,

"but I am come on a matter of some urgency. May I beg leave once again to enter your cellar?"

"Of course, my dear Mr. Prowting. Of course. You have a particular point to ascertain regarding that foul murder, I must suppose." My mother's countenance was alive with interest; but Mr. Prowting did not explicate his business, and never should she have conjectured the true object of his urgency. "What a de-lightful surprise to see you again, Mr. Hinton! Had I known we were to have such a party, I should have invited you all to take pot-luck with us!"

The clergyman's son stiffly bowed, and murmured some politeness. He should probably disdain to dine at so unfashion-able an hour, and was as yet arrayed in his morning dress.

"I do not think you know my eldest daughter--" my mother began, when Mr. Prowting broke in abruptly.

"As I said, ma'am--it
is
a matter of some urgency."

"Very well. Henry shall be happy to accompany you below."

My brother had already laid down his napkin and made for the door.

At such a moment, I was not about to be confined above-stairs with the women, and silently went to request a candle of Sally. She stood by while the little troupe crossed her kitchen to 198 ~ Stephanie Barron

the narrow stairs, her eyes round as buttons. Imagining, no doubt, that there was yet another corpse beneath her feet.

"A lanthorn, I think, Miss Austen--if you have not an oil lamp you may spare," the magistrate suggested.

I exchanged the candle for a lanthorn, at which Mr.

Prowting gestured me politely down the stairs. With a stiff nod, he then herded Mr. Hinton before him. The gentleman was ex-ceedingly pale, his eyes sparkling with an unnatural brilliancy, as tho' at any moment he might succumb to a fit. Henry brought up the rear, his gaze acutely trained on Mr. Hinton. I had not neglected to relate the whole of Catherine Prowting's story while my brother accompanied me home from Alton; and at the conclusion of it, Henry had declared that he would not be gone to London on the morrow for worlds.

Our ill-assorted pilgrimage came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

"Mr. Austen," the magistrate said heavily, "I must apologise again for the intrusion. There is no help for it. I have heard to-day such an account of the night in question--Saturday last, when Shafto French undoubtedly met his death--as must give rise to the gravest concerns and trouble. It is a weight, Mr.

Austen, upon me--a weight I alone must bear. Mr. Hinton now stands accused of French's murder."

"That is a lie," the gentleman retorted coldly, "as I have reit-erated this half hour or more."

"I am afraid, sir, that in so serious an affair as murder, I must subject you to certain proofs."

"But I have told you I did not harm the man!" Hinton cried.

"Does my word mean so little, Mr. Prowting?"

The magistrate stared at him from under lowering brows. "I must beg you to step over to the corner of the cellar. Mr.

Austen, you are my witness as to what is about to pass."

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 199

Mr. Hinton swallowed convulsively, his right hand rising to the knot of his ornate cravat. Of a sudden, he appeared to me a small, ill-natured boy of a kind too often hounded in his les-sons; the sort of raw cub who should mishandle his mounts and be thrown at every hedge. A coward, parading as a man of Fash-ion; a fool who should attempt to get by intrigue what he could not command from merit. A paltry, unfortunate, and ill-bred whelp, who should always labour under the severest conviction of ill-usage at the hands of his neighbours, resenting and envy-ing the world by turns.

"Miss Austen, would you raise your lanthorn?"

At the arcing beam of light there was a scuttle of rats, grown by now to seem a commonplace.
Link,
I thought; but the ter-rier's work must be forestalled at least another hour, until Mr.

Prowting had seen the marks on the floor undisturbed by rav-aging paws. We moved carefully towards the corner, an execu-tioner's lockstep honour guard, until the magistrate held up his hand.

"And now, sir--if you would be so good as to press your foot into the dust at exactly this place."

"What?" Hinton exclaimed. "Are you
mad
?"

"Pray do as I request, sir--or I shall have no alternative, I am afraid, but to abandon you to the Law."

"I shall do no such thing!" Hinton protested. "It is absurd!

The affronteries to which I have been subjected this evening--"

"For God's sake, man, do as I say!" Mr. Prowting burst out.

The gentleman glanced at Henry, but found no support; and then, with an expression of grimmest necessity, lifted his boot and pressed it into the dirt.

I sank down with the lanthorn, so that the light illuminated the cellar floor distinctly; and discerned the outline of Mr.

Hinton's boot fresh on the floor. The footprint my brother and 200 ~ Stephanie Barron

I had detected previously could still be seen, a ghost of the pres-ent one. To the naked eye, it appeared that the boot prints matched in every particular.

"Mr. Hinton, pray explain your movements on the night of the first of July," Mr. Prowting demanded in a dreadful voice.

"I was from home and from Chawton," the clergyman's son returned defiantly, "having ridden out that morning to meet a party of friends near Box Hill, where a prize-fight was to be held. I did not return until quite late. Any of my friends will say the same."

"Do you have an idea of the time?"

"--The time I reached home?"

"Was it before or after midnight?"

Hinton's gaze wavered somewhat, as tho' he began to un-derstand his danger. "I cannot undertake to say."

"Would it interest you to know that you were seen to dismount your horse near Chawton Pond at perhaps a quarter-hour or twenty minutes past midnight, early on Sunday morn-ing last, and to take up the body of a man you found there--a man, I would put it to you, Mr. Hinton, whom you had
left there
for dead some minutes before--
"

"Mr. Prowting!" the gentleman cried. "You forget yourself, sir! If you will credit the silly imaginings of a goosecap girl--"

"Sir," Mr. Prowting seethed, "it is
you
who forget yourself !

Observe the footprints! Can you deny that it is your boot?"

"I do not deny it." Hinton's lip positively curled. "You made certain you were provided with witnesses. But any boot may be much like another. The similarity in these marks can mean nothing to a man of reason."

"Can it not?" The magistrate looked to be on the point of apoplexy. "Who is your bootmaker, sir?"

There was a pause before Hinton replied.

"I hardly know. As I said--one boot is much like another."

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 201

"But not yours," Henry interposed softly. He, too, was crouching now near the lanthorn's beam, his eyes trained upon Mr. Hinton's footwear. "These Hessians look to be of Hoby's make, I should say, and are quite dear.1 From the wear that can be observed on toe and heel, I should judge that you ordered them fully a twelvemonth ago, and shall probably have them re-placed during a visit to Town in the autumn or winter; indeed, such an economical practise may long have been your habit. It is not every man who can afford to patronise Hoby--and only gentlemen possessed of the most exacting tastes. There cannot be another such pair of boots within twenty miles of Chawton, Mr. Hinton. I expect Hoby will have your measurements to ac-count, and will be happy to provide them to the magistrate."

With a swift and vicious precision, the cornered man swung his foot full in my brother's face. Henry cried out and fell back-wards, his hand clutching his nose.

I cast aside the lanthorn and went to him. Blood trickled be-tween his fingers, but still he strained against me, as tho' he should have hurled himself at Hinton's throat.

"Take care, my dear," I muttered. "You cannot demand sat-isfaction of a murderer, Henry. He is beneath your notice."

"Mr. Hinton!" the magistrate said accusingly. "Must you be tried for assault as well as murder?"

"I did not kill Shafto French," he spat between his teeth,

"and well you know it, Prowting. French may have found cause enough to kill
me;
but I regarded the man as little as I should re-gard a slug worming its way through my cabbages."

"So little, in fact, that you carried his body across the road 1 Hoby's establishment sat at the corner of St. James's and Piccadilly, and was considered the most elegant gentlemen's bootmaker of the period.

Hessians were a style introduced in the early part of the nineteenth cen-tury, worn outside the trousers and curving under the knee, with a leather tassel dangling from the center front.
--Editor's note.

202 ~ Stephanie Barron

and left it for the rats in this very cellar! Did you use your nephew Baverstock's key for the business? We are aware, Mr.

Hinton, that he may possess one. You cannot deny, man, that you stood here. For the last time, Mr. Hinton:
What explanation
will you offer for your actions?
"

Of a sudden, the fury seemed to drain from Hinton's coun-tenance, to be replaced by the coldest contempt. "I should never feel myself called upon to offer an explanation to you or any of the present miserable company. I am the
last true heir
of the Knights of Chawton, Prowting--and must consider myself above your jiggery-pokery
Law.
"

"Very well," the magistrate replied. "Then John-Knight Hinton, it is my painful duty as magistrate to arrest you--for the murder of Shafto French."

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Chapter 17

Too Long in the Back

Saturday, 8 July 1809

~

"As the house was built in the late seventeenth cen-tury," Lady Imogen observed as she led us into a long gallery at Stonings that was more lumber room than habitable space, "it remains firmly rooted in Palladio. The serene limestone facade, for example, is virtually free of adornment; no Jacobean chim-neys or Tudor panelling are to be found, and as successive gen-erations did not see fit to alter the original style, the house preserves a delightful unity--without the awkward shifting from epoch to epoch one so often observes in less modern cre-ations."

"Lord!" Ann Prowting exclaimed. "I wonder you can find your way to breakfast of a morning! I should require signposts in each passage to direct me from place to place. It is a vast pile, is it not?"

204 ~ Stephanie Barron

"Nearly three hundred rooms. Mr. Wyatt, whom we con-sulted regarding the improvements, has widened the whole and brought reason to the arrangement of the principal apart-ments.1 This is the saloon," Lady Imogen added, throwing open a set of lofty doors surmounted by a pediment, "--where we of-ten play at cards of an evening. The music room, where my in-strument is set out, is adjacent. The apartment is our chief delight at present, as Mr. Wyatt's work here is nearly complete."

Mr. Prowting, whose anxious bulk hovered at my right el-bow, managed a phlegmatic "Magnificent!"

It was a bright and airy chamber, with ivory-coloured walls and mouldings picked out in gold leaf; a massive chimney piece of carved white stone, in the form of nymphs supporting a plinth, dominated each end. The chief virtue of the room, how-ever, lay in its great windows, which gave onto a delightful prospect of lawns and trees sloping gently towards the lake.

This was skirted and surmounted in its narrowest part by a great stone parapet, over which our carriages had clattered only a few moments before.

We had set out from Chawton at ten o'clock, taking in Henry on our way. It was a smaller party than originally planned, my brother Neddie having pledged himself to all the cares and irksomenesses of Quarter Day, and being even now established in Mr. Barlow's back parlour awaiting the appear-ance of his numerous tenants. My mother could not be torn from the vigourous excavations undertaken in her back gar-den, of which she had unflagging hopes; and Mrs. Prowting was indisposed for a long carriage drive in the heat of summer, but thought it highly necessary that her husband accompany the 1 Lewis Wyatt was one of a family of architects who, collectively, were re-sponsible for some of the most significant buildings of the late Georgian and Regency periods.
--Editor's note.

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 205

two girls. We had therefore placed ourselves at Miss Maria Beckford's disposal, Cassandra and I taking two seats in the Middleton carriage. The three Prowtings and Miss Benn went in the magistrate's barouche; and the three eldest Middleton girls went in a hired equipage with their maid. Henry had made a dashing cicisbeo, trailing beside Miss Benn on his hired hack, and offering charming observations on the suitability of the party; and the weather had not seen fit to disappoint. We had achieved the intervening miles at an easy pace, and arrived in Sherborne St. John a few moments before noon.

We had been cordially met by Major Spence and Lady Imogen, who tarried only long enough to see our wraps be-stowed on a housemaid, before conducting us through the marble-floored entry hall to the delights within.

"I am reminded," Cassandra said in a lowered tone, "of the Duke of Dorset's establishment at Knole, in Kent; but tho' eas-ily as extensive as this, that is a house in an entirely different style."

Mr. Thrace, we were told, was still engaged in his morning's ride, but was every moment expected. Lady Imogen looked as tho' she did not notice her rival's absence. She was in excellent spirits, her manner a mixture of the arch and the sweet that could not fail to please. She was clothed this morning in a light muslin gown of pale jonquil colour, with beribboned sandals on her feet, her countenance glowing with the animation of her speech. There was a kind of triumph in all her aspect that sug-gested a victory gained--and I felt a surge of anxious solicitude on the subject of my stolen chest. Such happiness could not be due merely to last evening's win at cards--she had a deeper game in train, and appeared confident of her luck. The admi-ration of every gentleman in the room was evident; the rest of the ladies must be cast in the shade; and it was as well for my 206 ~ Stephanie Barron