Murder at Mansfield Park (24 page)

He had never yet used that word, and it had the predictable effect on the already high-wrought nerves of his companion. He sat back in his seat and took out his snuffbox. ‘Now, Miss Bertram. Perhaps you can tell me whether my theory requires some emendation?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Very little, Mr Maddox,’ she whispered. ‘You are correct in almost every particular. Except one.’

‘And that is?’

‘I did look back. I could hardly bring myself to do it, but some thing—some impulse—made me turn around. She was still there—lying on the ground where I had left her, screaming at me. I cannot get the sound out of my head. It haunts me, both sleeping and waking.’

Maddox could well believe it; her spirits were clearly quite exhausted. ‘So when they found the body, you presumed that she must have fallen into the trench, and been unable to save herself, dying a lingering and terrible death, from the effects of hunger, no more than a few short hours thereafter.’

Maria put her head in her hands, and her slender frame was racked with sobs.

Maddox took a pinch of snuff. ‘This is not the first time I have had cause to remark on the deficiencies of young ladies’ education, particularly in relation to what we might term the human sciences. A well-nourished young woman like Miss Price could not possibly have succumbed to starvation in so short a period, and certainly not if she retained the use of her lungs, and the ability to call for help. Now tell me, Miss Bertram, did you see the body when they brought it home?’

She shook her head, and murmured some thing in which the words ‘my cousin Edmund’ were distinguishable.

Maddox nodded; it was of a piece with every thing he knew of the public character of Edmund Norris to have stipulated that the young ladies should be protected from such a shocking and distressing spectacle, but on this occasion his interference had had terrible and unintended consequences.

‘Your cousin’s consideration for you has, for once, done you a grave disservice. Had you been permitted to see it with your own eyes, rather than relying for your information on rumour and servants’ gossip, you would have saved yourself many hours of needless grief and self-reproach.The wounds inflicted on Miss Price were far more grievous than any thing you describe. The blows that killed her were made by an iron mattock, not a human hand.’

Maria raised her head and stared at him, daring, for the first time in days, to allow herself the possibility of hope. ‘But how do you know that I am telling the truth—that I did not pick that mattock up and wield it, just as you say?’

Maddox shook his head, and smiled. ‘You have the proof, there, in your own hand.’

Her expression of uncomprehending amazement was, he had to admit, exceedingly gratifying, and one of the subtler pleasures of his chosen profession.

‘I do not take your meaning. I have nothing in my hands—nothing of relevance.’

‘On the contrary. Before I intruded upon you, you were engaged in needlework, were you not?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘—and, if I am not mistaken, you hold your needle in your left hand? And your pen, when you write?’

She nodded. ‘It is not the common way, I know— indeed, when I was a girl, my aunt Norris insisted that our governess school me to use my right hand instead, “as all but idiots do”. Every thing was attempted, including tying my left hand behind my back in the school-room, but it was to no effect. Not for nothing does my aunt call me
gauche
.’

‘I fear the effort was always doomed to failure, Miss Bertram. Such preferences are in-born, and cannot easily be changed—if at all. But you are correct in noting that it is not a common trait. It is so
un
common, in fact, that according to my observations, you are the only person I have encountered at Mansfield to exhibit it. A fact which is most significant, in the circumstances.’

He could have carried on in the same vein a good deal longer, but elected to be merciful; this girl had suffered enough, and all to no purpose.

‘I have considerable experience in the art and act of killing, Miss Bertram. It is not a suitable subject for young ladies’ ears, and I myself am frequently shocked and sickened at the extremities of cruelty and pain that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another. But such a long and intimate acquaintance with the many methods by which my fellow men have met an untimely death, allows me to be quite categorical as to certain critical aspects of the horrible crime I have been asked to investigate here, including the full significance of the exact position of the wounds that killed Miss Price. In consequence, I know for a fact you did not take your cousin’s life. The person who wielded that mattock did so with their
right hand
.’

It took several more minutes to convince her, and even longer to quiet her into any thing resembling a composed state of mind, but Maddox was patient. He had one more question to ask, and a demand to make, and he required her to be both rational and sensible when he did so.

‘Before I allow you to depart,’ he said presently, ‘I must enjoin you to absolute secrecy as to the nature of our discussion this morning; I have already commanded as much from your maid. I am sure Miss Bertram will find herself more than willing to accede to this request, in exchange for a reciprocal silence on my part. After all, I cannot believe she would wish to submit her mother, in particular, to further unseemly revelations about the goings-on in her own family.’

There was a blush at this, and she bent her head with downcast eyes.

‘Good. I was sure we would understand one another. My final request will not, I am sure, surprise you. Would you be so good as to inform me what
exactly
Miss Price said to you that morning?’

Maria stared into the distance, as if to force her attention to the reviving of such a distasteful memory.

‘It was very much as you surmised. I was astonished to see her—and see her in such high spirits, into the bargain. I asked where she had been, but she told me that was her affair, and none of mine. She said this in that arrogant, imperious way she had when we were alone, and out of the hearing of either of my parents—as if I was little better than a servant, or one of her pitiable underlings. I had been angry before, but her words and her tone aroused a fury such as I had never felt before. I thought of all the distress she had caused—the scandal in the neighbourhood—my mother’s grief—and yet there she was, parading about in her finest clothes, with no thought for the fact that she had put the whole family through days of doubt and misery on her account. Some part of this I think I said—my recollection is somewhat confused—but I do recall her laughing. Laughing out loud, and saying that she did indeed doubt that the like alarm would have been raised if
I
had been the one to go off with a man, instead of her. They would not have missed
me
half so much, she said, or wasted half the effort to discover
me
, always assuming I could have persuaded any man of fortune or distinction to take me in the first place.’

A single tear rolled down her cheek at this, and Maddox was moved to pity her; he could only imagine what submitting to the incessant spite and ascendancy of her cousin had been to a temper like Maria Bertram’s, an evil which even the comfort and elegance of such an eligible home could not have entirely atoned for. He had never met Miss Price, but every thing he had heard of her declared her to have been a monster of complacency and pride, who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, had succeeded in dominating Mansfield Park, and everyone in it. And without presuming to judge whether she had merited such a fate, he suspected, nonetheless, that Maria Bertram was not the only member of the family who might have yearned for a world without Miss Price, however much they might have shrunk from such a savage and brutal way of achieving it.

‘Go on, Miss Bertram,’ he said softly.‘We shall soon have done.’

‘I know she meant those words as provocation; I know she meant to insult and offend; but that was no excuse. I will think of what followed with shame and regret for the rest of my life. I struck her, Mr Maddox. I struck her full across the face, and she staggered. She had not expected it— how could she? She could not conceive of anyone having the audaciousness to raise a hand to
her—
to Miss Price, the heiress of Lessingby. I could scarcely believe it myself, and as I watched her sink on her knees before me in the mud every thing seemed to be happening with strange and unnatural slowness. And then the full horror of what I had done rushed in upon me, and I ran away.’

The two sat in silence for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. At last Maria rose to her feet, and made as if to return to the house. She was a few feet away when Maddox called her back.

‘You are quite sure she said she had left here with a man—that she had eloped?’

Maria nodded.

‘But she did not say with whom? You do not know who it was?’

‘No, Mr Maddox. I am sorry, but I cannot assist you. She never told me his name.’

Some time before this, Mary had returned to the relative peace of the parsonage, and, finding both Dr Grant and her sister departed on business to the village, she sat down in the parlour to write to Henry. She had not heard from him for some days, and had not written herself since Miss Price’s disappearance: as catastrophe had succeeded catastrophe she had not known how to begin, or how best to convey such terrible and unexpected news; preparing him for the disappointment to be occasioned by the cessation of all work on the improvements was only the least of her concerns.

She had arranged her paper, pen, and inkstand, and even gone so far as to write ‘My very dear Henry’, when she was suddenly aware of an unusual noise in the hall. A moment later the door of the room was thrown open, and Henry himself rushed into the room, his clothes bespattered with the dirt of the road, and his hat still in his hands.

‘Is she here?’ he cried, in a state of agitation. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘What can you mean?’ said Mary, rising to her feet in dismay. ‘
Whom
do you mean?’

‘My wife, of course—who else? I’ve come back to find her—I’ve come back to find Fanny.’

CHAPTER XV

Mary would remember the hour that followed to the end of her days. She could only be grateful that they were accorded the luxury of spending that hour alone, without even her sister or Dr Grant to overhear or intercede. It was hardly possible to take in all her brother had to say, and it was many, many minutes before she could form a distinct idea of what had occurred. It seemed that while Henry had, indeed, travelled to Sir Robert Ferrars’s estate, he had staid there no more than two days; hearing of Mr Rushworth’s engagement, he had decided, in a moment of rash impetuosity, to return to Mansfield in secret, and contrive to see Fanny. She, as Mary well knew, had taken to walking in the garden alone in the morning, and it was there that he had met her—met her, made love to her, and persuaded her, at last, to run away with him. It was clear that, on her side at least, it was a decision owing nothing to passion, and every thing to hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity, to the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to have married. Having a man like Henry Crawford wholly in her power had likewise offered its own allurements, as had the idea of a romantic elopement, and all the bustle and excitement of the intrigue—not merely travelling by night, and bribing innkeepers, but imagining the uproar that must have ensued at Mansfield, as soon as she was missed. More than once did Mary shake her head as she listened to this narration; more than once did she picture, with horror, the awful consequences of this rash marriage, had Fanny lived. But she had
not
lived, and Mary had not yet had the courage to say so. She watched as her brother paced up and down the room, his face haggard and anxious, despite the unaccustomed richness of his attire.

‘We were married in London four days later,’ he said, at length. ‘The day after she came of age. She was happy— ordering new clothes and viewing houses in Wimpole-street. She has a quite extraordinary talent for spending money—nothing is too good, nothing too expensive—but little more than a week later I awoke in our lodgings to find she was gone. I have spent every waking hour since looking for her.’

He threw himself into a chair, and cast his hat onto the table.

‘I come here at last in desperation, Mary. Knowing her as I now do, I cannot believe she would have returned here willingly. Not alone, at any rate. In triumph perhaps, to make a point. But the carriage is not yet ordered, the house not yet taken, the announcement in
The Times
not yet made. No, no, I do not believe it, it is not possible.’

He fell silent, and they heard the distant sound of the great clock at Mansfield, striking the half hour. Mary stirred in her chair. She hardly dared trust herself to speak, yet it was now absolutely necessary to do so. But even as she was collecting her thoughts and wondering how to begin, the door opened for a second time.

‘You see, my dear,’ Dr Grant was saying to his wife as they came into the room, ‘I was quite right. I knew the presence of such a horse in the yard could betoken only one thing. I will see to it that more claret is brought up from the cellar. I am glad to see you again, Crawford, even if you do return to a neighbourhood in mourning. We will all be very thankful when Sir Thomas resumes his customary place at Mansfield, and the funeral can at last take place; so protracted a delay is disrespectful, and serves only to amplify what is already the most lamentable circumstance. Indeed, I cannot conceive a situation more deplorable.’

‘In
mourning
?’ said Henry, rising again from his chair. ‘I do not understand—that is, Mary did not say—’

Mrs Grant looked first to Henry, and then to her sister. ‘Mary? Surely you have been most remiss—there has not been such an event as this in these parts for twenty years past. You will scarce believe it, Henry, but we have had a murder amongst us. Miss Price is dead.’

Dr Grant was the only one among them capable of any rational thought or deliberation in the course of the extraordinary disclosures that must naturally follow, though Mary could have wished his remonstrances less rigorous, or at the very least, rather fewer in number. Dr Grant had, indeed, a great deal to say on the subject, and harangued Henry loudly and at length for having so requited Sir Thomas’s hospitality, so injured family peace, and so forfeited all entitlement to be considered a gentleman. Mrs Grant needed her salts more than once, during this interminable philippic; while Henry, by contrast, seemed hardly to hear a word of it. He was not accustomed to allow such slights on his honour to pass with impunity, even from his brother-in-law, but his manner was distracted, and his whole mind seemed to be taken up with the attempt to comprehend such an unspeakable turn of events; he had started that day a husband, even a bridegroom, but he would end it a widower.