Murder at Mansfield Park (33 page)

The carriages came to a halt before the open door, the two hearses drawn by plumed horses, the first curtained in black, the second in maiden white. Maddox saw, with no little consternation, that the cortège was accompanied by Henry Crawford on horseback. The master of the house then took his place in the family carriage, and a few moments later the solemn procession began to make its slow way down the sweep. By the time they reached the church, the long line of servants following on foot had been considerably augmented by tenants from the Mansfield estate, and the carriages of the best local families, their blinds pulled down.

As the Mansfield footmen carried the two coffins into the nave, and Maddox took his own seat near the back of the church, he saw that Mrs Grant and her sister were already seated in the parsonage pew. He found it hard to believe that it was only a few days since he had last seen Mary Crawford, so changed was her appearance. Her face was drawn, and there was a hollowness about her eyes that did not augur well. He wondered, for a moment only, whether he might not be following the wrong course, but told himself that he was allowing his partiality for this woman to impede his professional judgment. Knowing what he did of Dr Grant, he could not hope for brief eulogia on the deceased, but all the same, he found himself unexpectedly affected by the signs of genuine grief that attended the clergyman’s account of Julia Bertram’s short life; her father and brother were visibly distressed, and her young maid, Polly Evans, wept inconsolably in Mrs Baddeley’s motherly arms.

When Dr Grant turned his attention to the late Mrs Crawford, Maddox was aware of an immediate and decided change in the mood in the church; there was little evidence of sorrow now, whether real or feigned, and the few murmurings that came to Maddox’s ears were expressions of sympathy for the plight of Mr Norris, a fact which he found both surprising and instructive. Nor did Maddox envy the clergyman his task: it was clear that, were it any other young woman but Sir Thomas’s niece, Dr Grant would have deemed it his Christian duty to present her fate as an awful warning to the congregation, and a caution against the evils of lust and avarice, but he was painfully constrained by the presence of his patron, and the demands of common politeness. It demanded all the ingenuity of a casuist to steer a safe course through such dangerous waters; to bury Mrs Crawford without praising her, and give an account of her life without referring to the husband who had seduced her, or the cousin who would be charged on the morrow with having done her to death. The husband, at least, had the good grace to appear abashed, and while Henry Crawford held his head high in the family pew, there was a spot of colour on each cheek that spoke either of a considerable suppressed anger, or an inner regret rising to wretchedness; even Maddox, with all his aptitude for physiognomy, could not determine which. It was of a piece with what he had come to know of the man, and he laid up this latest observation alongside the new intelligence Fraser had brought with him from Enfield. Henry Crawford was a conundrum that appeared to grow more complex the more closely he examined it; he had yet to decide if the solution to that conundrum was a matter of intellectual curiosity, or some thing more significant, but he hoped he might not have to wait very much longer to obtain his answer.

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 ajar. The sound, whatever it was, originated from there. Some thing impelled her forward, she knew not what, and almost without daring to breathe, she placed her hand to the door and pushed it open.

He was there. At the table, as if to eat—and there was, indeed, a plate at his side—but he was no longer sitting, no longer upright; he was slumped over the table, his head between his arms, his face half-concealed. She made a move towards him, then stopped, noticing for the first time the bottle and empty glass at his hand. She had never known him intoxicated—had thought, indeed, that he had an aversion to strong liquor in all its forms—and yet here he was, in the middle of the day, in a state of apparent drunkenness.

Her first feeling was one of guilty remorse—had she really brought him to this?—but a moment’s further observation led her to question her first response. There was still more than half a bottle of wine remaining, and he could not possibly have been reduced to such a state after imbibing so small a quantity. He bore all the signs of intoxication—the stertorous respiration, the flushed face—but as she moved closer, she could not discern the breath of wine.

‘Mr Norris?’ she said, hesitatingly. ‘May I speak to you for a moment?’

There was no reply.

Summoning all her courage, she put out a hand and took him by the shoulder, and spoke again, as loudly as she dared,‘Mr Norris? Are you awake?’

Once more, she received no reply, but the propinquity in which she now stood allowed to observe him more closely, and she perceived that his stupefaction did not so much resemble the effects of drink, as the terrifying torpor into which Julia Bertram had descended, and from which they had not been able to reclaim her. She reached for the glass at once, and seized it with fumbling fingers; her suspicions were correct—there was a strong odour of laudanum.

‘My God!’ she cried. ‘What have you done—what have you
done
?’

She dragged him to an erect position, his head lolling over one shoulder, and saw, with terror, that his face was beginning to take on the same deep suffusion of blood that she had seen only a few days before. This time, at least, she knew what to do. She moved first towards the bell to ring for assistance, before she recollected that the servants were all absent; she turned towards the door, thinking to call for aid from her brother and Stornaway, but she never reached it.There was already someone standing there, with her hand to the door-handle, and a basket of cutlery over one arm.

‘Oh Mrs Norris!’ cried Mary, running towards her. ‘Thank God that you are here! You must help me—I think Edmund has taken poison—he must have despaired in the face of—but no matter—I fear I am not making myself very clear, but this is exactly what happened with poor Julia—we must act
quickly
—it may already be too late!’

Mrs Norris looked at her for a long moment, then shut the door quietly behind her.

‘You would do better to sit down and calm yourself, Miss Crawford. These theatrical performances of yours serve no useful purpose.’

‘But—did you not hear me?’ she stammered. ‘Your son has taken
poison
—we must procure him an emetic—I know what to do—and with your knowledge of remedies you must have such a thing in the house—there is a chance—if we intervene at once that we may—’

‘We may
what
, Miss Crawford? Preserve his life so that you may tighten your grip yet further on his heart?’

‘I do not know what you mean—’

‘
You
were more than half to blame,’ she said, advancing towards Mary. ‘If it had not been for you, and that blackguard brother of yours, they would be married by now. Once Rushworth was out of the way I thought everything would return to how it should be, but oh no. Your contemptible brother resorted to the most vile arts, to the most depraved, wicked contrivances to lure her away—’

‘But even if that were true,’ interrupted Mary, ‘it is not important
now
, not at this moment. We must act quickly to help Edmund or we will
both
lose him. Please, Mrs Norris— he has taken laudanum—a very great deal of laudanum—’

‘I know exactly what he has taken, and I know better than
you
can do what the consequences will be.’

Mary took a step back, hardly knowing what she did. It occurred to her, for the first time, that Mrs Norris did not look quite her usual self; there was an involuntary twitch under one eye, and she seemed to be labouring to catch her breath.

‘It was
you,
’ said Mary slowly, as the horrifying truth flooded her mind. ‘All of this—from the beginning—was
your
doing.’

‘You need not look so shocked, Miss Crawford.You are a woman of spirit yourself; indeed, it is the single admirable quality you possess. Do not try to pretend to
me
that you are not capable of resolution and premeditation in the pursuit of what you desire. I have seen you at it every day for months.’

‘So it was you who tampered with Mr Gilbert’s cordial.’ ‘I could not risk the girl waking up and accusing me. I could not be sure what she had seen. As soon as Gilbert told me that she might make a full recovery, I knew what I must do.’

‘And you are now prepared to do the same to your own
son
?’

Mrs Norris’s face became hard and closed. ‘
He
is no child of
mine
. And in any case, it will be better thus. I do not know what you said to him at the belvedere, but when he returned he was like a man possessed. I tried to explain, but he would not
listen.
He was out of the house before I could stop him, and straight to that odious ruffian, Maddox. But I need not tell
you
, that any sort of trial is completely out of the question. Even to contemplate that a son of my dear late husband’s—a
Norris
—might be paraded through the streets of Northampton to the jeers of the common rabble—it is in every way unthinkable. This way it will all be hushed up, and soon everyone will have forgotten that any thing ever happened.’

‘
Forgotten
? How can the Bertrams ever forget their daughter? How will any of us forget what happened to Fanny? And to resort to such
violence—
I saw what you did to her, and the memory of it sickens me.’

‘As to that, I will admit to falling prey to a momentary impulse—a mere freak of temper. She wrote to me, you know, flaunting her patched-up marriage—rejoicing in the fact that I would probably succumb to an apoplexy when I discovered the name of her husband. Congratulating herself for having escaped Edmund—and the next moment stating that she was even more thankful to have escaped
me. Me!
Do you know what I have done for that girl all these years? Petted and cosseted and brought her forward, day after day, even at the expense of my sister Bertram’s children. And all for nothing—
nothing!
And when I met her that morning she threw it all in my face—with such
pleasure—
such malicious enjoyment of my ignominy and humiliation.’

‘And did she take an equal delight in your imminent ruin?’ said Mary quietly.

‘What’s that?’ snapped Mrs Norris.

‘My brother saw parts of that letter, Mrs Norris. I know that Mrs Crawford referred to your very great need of money—
her
money.That was the real reason why you were so keen on the marriage, was it not? It had nothing to do with your son’s happiness, and every thing to do with her vast fortune. It was not the family honour that my brother destroyed, but your own hopes of ever rectifying your perilous financial position. All your scrimping and penny-pinching,
they
were real enough, but this house, your style of life, it was all a sham—a blind.There is no money, is there, Mrs Norris? It has all gone.’