Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (23 page)

Must I always translate for you?
Etienne LaForge enquired wearily.
Chessyre is dead. I shall not long survive him.

I drew my dressing gown about my shoulders. The palest light seeped through the clouded windows; a bank of heavy fog pressed down upon the house. It was an hour for lying curled in a huddle of warm blankets; but I could not be easy in my mind. The Frenchman's words haunted me. Was I a fool to accord such weight to the spectres of fancy? Perhaps in my younger days I might have shrugged off this nocturnal warning; but the wages of experience are caution. I have learned that what waking thought may not penetrate, the slumbering mind will illumine. I am hardly the first to credit the notion—the English language is replete with aphorisms that would urge a troubled soul to retire with worry, and find comfort in the dawn. For are we not “such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep”?
¹

Chessyre is dead. I shall not long survive him.

I twitched back the curtains and strained to make out the street below. My eyes have never been strong, and in the grey light every outline was indistinct; but even I could not mistake the horse and rider lingering there. The express messenger had been instructed to wait. His mount snorted and tossed its head; its breath

showed white in the frigid air. At that moment, I caught the sound of my brother's door bursting open, and the quick light race of his feet along the passage. The reply, then, would be urgent. I must dress and discover what intelligence was come before Frank entirely quitted the house.

I let fall the curtain and broke the thin layer of ice in my ewer. I avoided the image of my own face in the glass; the persistent cold in my head could not improve my looks, and its effects were most determined before breakfast One could only hope that by this evening's party at Captain Foote's the swelling of my nose would have diminished. The view of a lady's complexion by candlelight, in any case, is vastly to be preferred to the glare of day.

“Jane!” My brother's voice came quick and cutting beyond the door. “Are you awake?”

“Of course.” I admitted him immediately. “What news, Frank—good or bad?”

“The magistrate has called the inquest into Chessyre's death for nine o'clock this morning. Tom Seagrave shall be in Southampton within the hour.”

“Oh, no! Poor Louisa!”

“I understand she intends to remove with her children to Southampton, the better to observe her husband's misery. It was she who drafted this letter; I must suppose that Tom did not wish to seek my aid. His wife shows less of injury, and more of sense. I replied that I shall endeavour to secure her accommodation at the Dolphin.”

So Louisa Seagrave had determined to decline Lady Temple ton's offer, and the funeral party in Kent. There was little enough of choice remaining to such a woman, I thought: an interval among relations one could not love, or the prospect of a husband's public disgrace. Either event should involve her in consuming shame; so proud a creature must be prey to every mortification. Dr. Wharton's Comfort should be sought all too often in the coming days.

“I shall leave my card at the Dolphin this morning,” I said thoughtfully. “She
must
receive every consideration at such a time. It seems hard in us to abandon her to solitude this evening—but I do not like to give up the party at the Footes', even in so persuasive a cause. We go out so little during the winter months—and Mary has looked forward to it so.”

“Devil take Louisa Seagrave!” Frank retorted savagely. “She may sit in contemplation of her disloyalty to Tom, and see whether she finds reason to blame herself for his present fate. Had she told the magistrate that her husband was at home Wednesday night—”

“She should have perjured herself without improving his chances,” I interrupted with equanimity. “Do not make her the proxy for your own unhappy conscience, my dear.”

The door to my brother's bedchamber slammed harshly in reply. From the floor below came the clang of an iron pan and the first heavy odours of bacon fat and boiling coffee; our faithful Jenny should be gone in search of fresh rolls.

Frank's furious voice shouted for hot water—and then like the strain of an uncertain bird, came Mary's placating tone. I pitied them both. Frank must regard himself as in some wise responsible for his friend's debacle. He had told Seagrave that which should make him murderously angry; and he had given Percival Pethering all that was required to clap the man in chains.

Frank would certainly attend the inquest; but I should be spared the discomfort. I had played no part in the body's discovery, I had witnessed nothing that must be disclosed, and I will confess that I felt consuming relief. I had no love for a coroner's panel—they are, in my experience, the product of haste and officiousness, spurred by information that is at best incomplete and, at worst, mendacious. In the present case, I could wager on the unhappy outcome. This should be Tom Seagrave's last day of liberty.

The thump of a boot hurled with vicious force thudded against my bedchamber wall; I heard a bell ring at the other end of the hall. My mother was awake, and demanding the most current news; she should be all agog at the flurry of misfortune among our acquaintance. But I could spare the matter only a part of my mind. Frank might be thrashing in the grip of rage; Louisa Seagrave, bound for the Dolphin; her husband, destined for misery—but I intended to appear at an evening party, and must endeavour to be a credit to my family.

Martha Lloyd—ingenious at the trimming of headdresses—had promised to accompany me to Pearson's, the milliner in the High, for a perusal of exotic feathers. A turban must be requisite for a lady of my advancing years: something dignified and imposing, with a swag of braid and a peacock's plume not unsuited to a gown of Prussian blue sarcenet. I fear that I am quite past the age of appearing all in white, regardless of season; such an attitude may be permitted only among pale consumptives or determined vestals, and I have never aspired to either station.

I turned back into my room and pulled my shift over my head, heedless of the draughts.

M
Y CONSCIENCE WAS NOT SO BEWITCHED BY THE
prospect of dissipation, however, that I ignored the duty of sending my card up to Mrs. Seagrave at the Dolphin when Martha and I passed the inn later this morning. I declined to wait, having bade the footman not to disturb the lady; and trusted I should have the pleasure of receiving her in East Street before very long.

“Where is the inquest to be held?” Martha enquired in a voice better suited to the graveyard.

“At the Vine. It is much less public than this place, and the magistrate appears disposed to discretion, at least.”

“Is your brother in any danger?”

I looked at my friend in some surprise. There was
that
in her voice that suggested the most acute anxiety; and I thought it hardly the disinterested concern of a fellow-lodger. Some remnant of youthful feeling for Frank must survive in Martha's breast; but it should never do to speak of it now.

“Far less than he should be upon the open seas,” I told her easily. “He is a sensible man; he has nothing to hide; and I trust he shall convince every fellow on the panel of his probity and good sense.”

Martha sighed. “For so much of difficulty to come at such a time! With the removal to Castle Square but a fortnight hence—and Mrs. Frank's baby so near its time—and there is the possibility of a ship, I understand? Our Frank may be posted before his wife's childbed? It seems he has been ashore but a few months, and they would be sending him off again! The Navy is governed by brutes and beasts, Jane!”

“I am sure Mrs. Seagrave must believe so,” I said thoughtfully, and stared up at the inn's bow windows.

M
ARTHA'S SPIRITS SHOWED GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT AS
we made our way along the High—stopping here to finger a sprigged muslin, there to abuse a bonnet of atrocious design. The day was clear and bright, almost unnaturally so for February, but sharply cold. We were obliged to enter far more shops than we had originally intended, merely to keep warm. When at last we had all but stripped our purses bare, I proposed a bit of refreshment—and was turning for a pastry shop I knew of, tucked into Butchers' Row, when two small figures huddled on a neighbouring doorstep caught my eye. They were dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, and shuddering from the cold: both well-grown boys, not unfamiliar, and decidedly ill-clothed against the penetrating wind.

“Charles Seagrave! And Edward!” I cried. “You shall both of you catch your deaths!”

Charles, the elder, sprang upright like a jack-in-the-box, his grey eyes wide with relief. “It's the lady who called upon Mum in Lombard Street,” he informed his brother. “When Uncle Walter was there. I have forgot your name,” he admitted doubtfully, “though you know mine.”

“Never admit to such an ignorance before a lady, Charles,” I told him briskly. “It is the worst sort of offence a gentleman may bestow. I am Miss Austen, and this is Miss Lloyd. How do you boys come to be abroad, entirely alone, in such cold weather? Where is Nancy? Surely she attended you from Portsmouth?”

“Nancy is in charge of the baby,” retorted Charles, “and good riddance, so cross as she is!”

Little Edward rose to his feet, his bare fingers thrust under his arms, his lips blue and chattering. “Please, m-m-miss, don't be telling our mum about our lark! She's resting after our journey from P-p-portsmouth, which was bang-up jolly if you ask me—four post horses hired from the G-g-george, and everything prime about 'em! How we ratt-tt-ded along! We made the distance in under two hours!”

“Am I to understand that your mother is as yet ignorant of your absence?” I enquired in an awful tone. “That you are both abroad expressly without permission?”

Martha choked upon what I guessed to be a laugh. The brothers quailed. Charles threw his arm about Edward, as though his thin nankeen jacket might supply the want of warmth in the younger boy's own.

“We only meant to have a look around town,” he protested. “It's our first visit to Southampton! We've been down the High to the Quay, and seen all the ships, and poked our noses into the dockyard—though it's a poor thing indeed compared to Portsmouth's,” he concluded contemptuously.

“Not even Nancy knows of your going?”

He shook his head.

“They shall be all in an uproar at the inn,” murmured Martha beside me.

“We intended to return ages ago!” Edward cried. “Only—we could not find the High once we had visited the bathing machines. We are most dreadfully lost.”

I did not have the heart to tell them that the High Street was but a hundred yards away. Both boys were shivering violently now. Edward looked upon the verge of tears.

“Come along,” I said with a sigh. “Miss Lloyd and I shall treat you to hot chocolate and honey cakes in that pastry shop opposite, while I beg some paper and a messenger of the proprietor.”

Crows of delight interrupted my declaration. I endeavoured to look stern.

“We shall send a note to the Dolphin attesting to your whereabouts and safety—but the very moment your last drop of chocolate is drunk, my fine fellows, it is off to the inn with you and no mistake! You require hot water bottles and warm possets, and you do not wish to die of an inflammation of the lungs.”

Suitably subdued, the boys preceded us into the pastry shop, and commenced to eat with a voracity that suggested young wolves. I secured my paper and pen, and began to compose a note for Louisa Seagrave while Martha kept up a stream of nonsense calculated for the boys' amusement. But not all their talk was of spillikins and hoops, or the dashing naval actions recently reported in the
Gazette;
little Edward must be constantly reverting to the subject foremost in the boys' minds: the judgement hanging over their father's head.

“Charles and I have determined to run away to sea if Father hangs,” he informed us as he tucked into an apple pasty.

“Edward!” his brother hissed in a quelling tone. Possessing eight years to his brother's six, he was necessarily more cautious, and knew the value of discretion. “They will tell Mum straightaway! Only you mustn't,” he added for our benefit, “for it is our only recourse, as I'm sure you're aware, being of the naval set yourselves. If Father hangs, we shall be tossed overboard in a manner of speaking. I mean to say—no connexions worth having, and no influence with the Admiralty. We shall have to make our way if we mean to advance.”

Martha gazed at Charles doubtfully. “I am sure your father—even supposing the worst should happen, which I do not admit for an instant—would wish you to serve as support for your mother. She should be in ever greater need of you, if she were … alone … in the world.”

“Muzzer that go into Kent,” Edward declared through a mouthful of pastry. “We thould be more of a burden if we thayed.” He swallowed mightily. “Besides, I cannot support Aunt Templeton. She means to engage a tutor for us! As if we did not know all we needed to learn, already! She is an apeleader! Poor Uncle Walter—how he must suffer it!”

“He is shot of her for now,” returned Charles, “and must be having a jolly time of it. But I for one shall
certainly
run away to sea if we are bound for Luxford!”

I met Martha's eyes over the heads of the two boys. She raised one eyebrow. At that moment, the bells of St. Michael's Church, adjacent to our seats in the shop's bow front window, tolled half-past eleven o'clock. The inquest into Mr. Chessyre's death must be concluded, or nearly so.

I was suddenly sharply impatient to know what the judgement might be, and determined to place the boys in Martha's charge—they were getting along famously, for Martha has always been a slave to children's amusement—and set off in search of Fly. I gathered up my paper parcels—one held a pair of gloves in dark blue satin, quite unlike my usual wear, but perfectly in keeping with the iridescent hue of the three feathers I had chosen under Martha's instruction—and motioned for the reckoning. Pray God I had sufficient coin to satisfy the ravages of two healthy young predators.