Jane Austen Mysteries 10 Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (26 page)

"I do not think Sir Harding Cross credited her ladyship's assertions. He thanked her for her testimony, then quietly ordered her withdrawn from the room. She went, I am told, rather as Anne Boleyn went to the axe, with her head high and her arms grasped by two bashful constables."

"It is all a sort of play to Caro," Desdemona said; "it comes from growing up among the Devonshire House Set; they could none of them be serious. But tell me, Jane: What do you propose to do in this matter? How shall you set about your researches? How may Swithin and I be of service?"

"Lady Oxford is even now on her road to Brighton?" I asked.

"We expect her by four o'clock. Should you like to dine with us?"

"Far better, before she is arrived in Brighton, to speak to Byron himself." I glanced at the Earl of Swithin. "Can it be managed, sir, do you think?"

He threw me an engaging smile. "Nothing could be easier, my dear Miss Austen. If I know Byron, he went directly from the inquest to Scrope Davies's rooms, to drown his sorrows in brandy! Davies has long been an acquaintance of mine--we may certainly pay him a call!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Poet

W
EDNESDAY
, 12 M
AY
1813
B
RIGHTON, CONT
.

M
R
. S
CROPE
D
AVIES
, I
AM TOLD
,
IS POSSESSED OF A
complex character. Indeed, if I may believe the Earl of Swithin, who knows Davies best, he is singularly equipped to serve as Lord Byron's intimate, being possessed of a mind brilliant enough to win him a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge--but too indolent to long remain there. It was at Cambridge he formed his acquaintance with Byron; and being, like Byron, of impoverished background, the two were continually borrowing money of each other. Davies is a gambler, and a familiar among the denizens of Crockford's and White's; a dandy who counts Mr. Beau Brummell among his friends, he is known for his immaculate dress and his existence on a pecuniary knife's-edge.

"I
had heard
, from sources I should judge unimpeachable," said our own particular banker, Henry, as we quitted the Castle, "that Davies stood surety for a significant loan--nearly five thousand pounds--when Byron was but a minor; which sum was not repaid for
nearly six years
. The duns so hounded Davies he was said to contemplate suicide; he was subject to arrest, and petitioned for the arrears in interest; and all the while, his lordship was abroad--enjoying the exotic climes that should inspire him to write
Childe Harold
. In this we find the measure of the gentleman's loyalty--poor Davies has every reason to hate Lord Byron; and yet the two remain friends."

There it was again; the word
hate
. If one were intent upon exonerating the poet, one might well begin by examining those who should wish to see him hanged. Cuckolded husbands, ladies spurned, and friends upon whom he presumed too much. "Mr. Davies was
not
arrested for debt, however?"

It was the Earl who answered me. "Byron mortgaged his birthright--Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire--last year; perhaps
then
he discharged his debt to poor Davies. The gentleman has been patience itself; not even the destruction of his peace may diminish his regard for Byron. He is even named as one of the Executors of his lordship's Estate."

It was not until we were arrived at Mr. Davies's door that I understood he lived in Church Street--and, moreover, had taken a house directly opposite General Twining's, where we had let down Catherine only a few days previous. The sudden knowledge of Byron's proximity to his alleged victim brought me up short--any sort of meeting, in the dead of night, should have been possible. The poet might have been watching Catherine for weeks past, under the cover of his friendship for Mr. Davies! He might have stood, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, at an upper-storey window and observed the poor girl's solitary progress towards her home.
He might have intercepted her
. Avowals of time and place, the witness of friends, were as nothing, once the position of both households was observed. I must pay a call of condolence soon on General Twining--and learn what I could of that fatal night.

Henry, I am certain, was alive to the possibilities in Mr. Davies chusing to live in Church Street; he gave me a significant look as the Earl pulled his friend's bell.

Davies's man opened the door, and would have denied his master to our party, but that Swithin commanded the fellow to convey his card within. A few moments of uneasiness followed; and then the man reappeared, to usher us blandly upstairs.

We found a mingled party of gentlemen: Mr. Scrope Davies, tall and lean and impeccably dressed, his cravat a marvel of neat complexity; his forehead broad, his hairline receding, and his countenance mottled as befitted a hard drinker. I judged him to be in his late twenties, older than Byron but younger than some of the company that had repaired to his house. The gentleman named Hodge--last met at the Countess of Swithin's the previous evening--was bent over a table with his inevitable pair of dice; but on this occasion he cast against an actual partner, a harsh-featured and sandy-haired fellow in his fifth decade, I should judge, who stared at Desdemona and me with pugnacious contempt. In him I recognised the Bow Street Runner glimpsed on the box of the constables' carriage; Byron's personal guard. A fourth fellow leaned against a bookshelf, tenderly tuning the strings of a violin; he did not so much as glance at us as we entered the room, but persisted in humming a scrap of Beethoven to himself.

Sprawled on the sopha, his dark locks disarranged, his waistcoat loosened, and his cravat untied--was George Gordon, Lord Byron.

I suppose I ought to pause at this moment to record my impressions of so celebrated a man; and so I have paused, and lifted my pen from the page of this journal as I sit writing tonight in my bedchamber at the Castle. I have allowed my eyes to stare at the candle-flame, wavering in the draughts from the sea. I stared so long that my vision blurred, and cast phantasms on the walls; I shook my head to clear it. I would prefer to be able to dismiss Lord Byron as an ill-mannered and disreputable pup, a spoiled boy possessed of more arrogance than wit, an insolent darling of the
haut ton
unworthy of any respectable woman's notice. But I cannot. Our tete-a-tete worked upon me strangely, and I have yet to reconcile my warring opinions of him. Perhaps the interval of reflection--a thorough consideration of my interview with the poet--will bring welcome clarity. The mere summoning of his person to mind is enough to cause tumult in the breast--an inward clamour, tho' the Castle is peaceful enough this evening.

Most of the inn's occupants are abed; being a Wednesday, the town was not very lively this evening, given over to card parties and boxes at the theatre in New Road--tho' I have an idea that the better part of the populace was gathered privately, in a multitude of salons, to talk over the scandalous news of murder. But to return to the scene in Scrope Davies's drawing-room--

Lord Byron was drinking claret as he lay on the sopha, nursing a bottle to himself. His bloodshot eyes moved dully over our party, but at his friend Davies coming forward to bow to the Earl and Countess--clearly astounded that Swithin had not come alone, as his card had suggested, but had actually brought his
wife
, not to mention a pair of strangers--Byron forced himself upright, and set the bottle between his feet.

I tried not to stare at these; one, his right, was perceptibly deformed. His lordship is said to be morbidly anxious on the subject of lameness.

"Our intimate friends," the Earl said to Scrope Davies carelessly, "Mr. and Miss Austen."

"Pleasure," Davies murmured, looking about him with a wild air, as tho' we four had stumbled upon an orgy. "Countess, I had no notion--beg you will forgive the general air of disorder--I live as a bachelor, as you no doubt know--believe you are acquainted with Mr. Hodge...."

Upon hearing his name, this gentleman shot our uncertain group a sharp look and said, "Mona, your servant. Miss Austen," and went back to throwing his dice. The sandy-haired Runner who cast against him swore loudly and fluently, without a thought for ourselves, and slammed his free hand upon the table. "That's seven pounds you've stolen from me!" he cried. "I shall have to sell me pistols."

"I would not have you do so for the world," Hodge replied in a bored tone, "for then Byron should be killed; and there would be no end to the women laying blame at my door. Let's throw again--Luck's the very Devil, but it changes as swift as affection."

The Earl of Swithin, meanwhile, had bowed to the dissipated figure on the sopha. "My felicitations, George. You came out of the morning's affair rather well. Have you any notion of when you may be released from your obligations to the Law, and return to London?"

"None," the gentleman said curtly. "The magistrate is a fool. Mona, have you had a letter from Lady Oxford?"

"We expect her every hour," the Countess said. "Pray dine with us this evening; there shall be no one but yourselves."

"She means to stay with you, then?"

"So I understand."

"Bloody hell," Byron said heavily. "I wish she had not got it into her head to come here. She shall be subject to every sort of insult--and from
that
I would preserve her at any cost. The rabble of Brighton are nothing, you know, to its
haut ton
. They may freeze the blood of Satan's imp at a single glance; and my poor Jane shall be held in abhorrence, being known for an enemy of the Regent's. The office of
maitresse
to a murderer is as nothing to it. Well, we have given them something to chatter about, at least!
Society is
now one polished horde / Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and / Bored.
"

"Byron, I believe you're foxed," Swithin observed.

"
What's drinking, quoth he? A mere pause from thinking
. And why should I not be drunk?" his lordship demanded belligerently. "It is of a piece with all the rest. Do you not know me for a hellhound? Is that Miss Austen, did'ye say? Miss
Jane
Austen?"