Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (38 page)

“I see,” said the surgeon; and possibly he did. “How many children? “

“Three, one of them a babe in arms. She possesses a nursemaid; we must presume the woman presently in charge.”

“Has she any family capable of lending support? A home to which she might go, under careful super-vision, while attempting to wean herself from the vile stuff?”

I hesitated. “There is her aunt—the lady to whom Captain Seagrave referred. Lady Templeton has quitted Portsmouth, I believe, and is presently gone into Kent She was bound for a place called Luxford House— somewhere, I think, near Deal.”

“Luxford House!” Mr. Hill straightened. “Then your Lady Templeton is gone to a funeral! Viscount Luxford is very lately deceased—I read the account only yesterday in the
Morning Gazette.”

“So we understand. Mrs. Seagrave is the late Viscount's daughter.”

Mr. Hill's eyes gleamed sharply. He glanced down at Louisa, who remained insensible. The draught of laudanum, however, appeared to have made her more comfortable; she looked now to be only sleeping.

“Have the maid bathe her temples with vinegar every quarter-hour,” the surgeon instructed. “I can do nothing more here at present; and it is imperative I speak with you both.”

“A
RE YOU AWARE OF THE DISPOSITION OF THE
L
UXFORD
estate?” Mr. Hill enquired.

I glanced at Frank, who appeared as bemused as myself. We had descended to the Dolphin's downstairs parlour, the better to converse in privacy; the airy room was empty but for ourselves.

“We know nothing of the family at all,” I answered. “We have only just learned the name in recent days.”

“In company with the better part of England,” Mr. Hill replied comfortably. “Mrs. Seagrave and her history are now the intimate concern of every reader of the
Morning Gazette
—to say nothing of the
Post,
the
Times,
and every other reputable scandal-monger in the Kingdom. The report of the Viscount's death has led to considerable speculation. For the provisions of his will—and the passage of his estate—must leave your friend in peculiar suspense.”

There is no one in England, I daresay, who may resist the temptation of canvassing an estate oddly left; the various clauses and provisions of wills, while dry stuff in themselves, must lead to the most extraordinary incident. Fortunes are made and lost; heirs plucked from obscurity, or thrown into eclipse; ancient scandals revived, in all their lurid particulars; and the Dead afforded the satisfaction of disturbing the Living's peace for a decade or more.

“Pray sit down, Mr. Hill,” said my brother. “Let us send for refreshment. Madeira, perhaps, and ratafia cakes?”

“I should be infinitely obliged,” said the surgeon, and pulling the tails of his black coat over his hips, he sat

The wine was brought; I accepted a glass; Louisa's maid appeared to report that Mrs. Seagrave was unchanged, however much vinegar might be pressed into her temples; and Mr. Hill was urged to a second round of Madeira. His thin face took on a bit of colour, and his small eyes did not lose their gleam.

“I often think that had I spurned the world of physick, and the adventure of the seas, I should have loved nothing so well as a tidy solicitor's office, and the management of sundry affairs,” he observed. “Three or four families, in a country village—provided they be sufficiently rich or eccentric to involve the affairs of a multitude—is the very thing to work on. And so we come to the Viscount.”

“I gather that he made some mention of Mrs. Seagrave in the will?” said Frank impatiently.

“So it is rumoured. The actual reading of the testament will not occur, to be sure, until after the Viscount is interred—and that is not to happen until Tuesday. But speculation is rife, I fear, and the Viscount's solicitors have not been as chary with intelligence as his lordship might have wished. Are you at all familiar with the gentleman?”

I shook my head.

“He was a very warm man, I believe,” said Frank.

“So warm as to be positively scalding,” agreed Mr. Hill. “Viscount Luxford inherited a very handsome fortune at his ascendancy, but rather than going immediately to ruin in the pursuit of horses, gambling hells, or the improvement of his estate—he engaged in speculation.”

“Which is merely gambling by a different name,” my brother observed.

“But a happier one, in Luxford's case. He first commissioned the building of a crescent, to the designs of Nash,
¹
on property long held by the family in Mayfair; the buildings, when sold, garnered a fortune. This in turn he ploughed back into commerce, by investing in ships. Luxford money has long been a considerable force in the management of the Honourable East India Company. More tea has come to England in Luxford's

holds, and more opium gone from India to China, than might fill all of Southampton.”

“Opium!” I cried.

“Naturally. It is a vital part of our triangular trade— though one we may hesitate to mention in polite circles. By consigning the vice to China, however unwillingly she might accept it, we may congratulate ourselves on remaining untainted.”

“How dreadful, that the Viscount's daughter should now be enthralled to the very abuse he has encouraged.”

“There are many hypocrisies inherent in trade, Miss Austen—and chief among them is the notion that noblemen never engage in it. They may not build their own ships or purchase their own cargoes; they call themselves investors rather than merchants; but they thrive in the mercantile world as happily as the Fashionable one.”

“And so we may take it that Viscount Luxford was exceedingly wealthy at the time of his death,” Frank persisted.

Mr. Hill nodded. “One of perhaps three or four of the richest men in England. There was talk of an earldom just last month, before Luxford took ill.”

Frank let out a faint whistle. “And yet he cut his daughter off without a farthing when she married Seagrave.”

“To say that she was cut off is not entirely exact.” Mr. Hill pressed a napkin delicately to his lips, as though to contain his own huge excitement. “I believe the Viscount lived in fear of his daughter's marrying a worthless adventurer, and we may judge him to have regarded Seagrave in such a light Her portion was no less than an hundred thousand pounds, along with some considerable property in Berkshire, that came to her through her mother's line.”

“Her
portion!”
I said. “But Louisa is his only child. Is the bulk of the estate entailed upon heirs male? Shall it go to a cousin, perhaps?”

“I am coming to that,” Mr. Hill informed me. “Luxford settled this marriage portion upon his daughter with the express provision that she must marry with his blessing.”

“Louisa eloped,” I told him.

“And was thrown off by her family. I am afraid that the Viscount took then-Lieutenant Seagrave in such violent dislike, that he sought to be punitive in the management of his daughter's affairs. Louisa's marriage portion was made over to her issue, inheritable only upon her husband's death,”

“The sole purpose being to keep the property from Tom,” Frank said.

“Exacdy. And so we proceed to the Viscount's entire estate—which, according to the knowledgeable fellows at the
Morning Gazette,
is estimated in the millions of pounds. If Louisa Seagrave is a married woman at the moment the will is read, the estate and tide are to pass to her eldest son—provided she divorces her husband within the year, and her son adopts the Luxford family name of Carteret.”

“Good God!” I cried, and stared at my brother. “What an inducement to unhappiness and vice! Might any woman be equal to refusing such temptation?”

“And is Louisa then empowered to act as her son's guardian and trustee?” Frank enquired.

Mr. Hill smiled thinly. “The late Viscount was hardly so forgiving. He offers his estranged daughter ample funds—some ten thousand pounds per annum—and the use of the Dower House at Luxford; but the guardianship of her son and the management of his affairs, including his vast fortune, will be undertaken by Sir Walter and Lady Templeton—trustees to the estate.”

“And thus we comprehend the benevolent activity of Lady Templeton in Lombard Street,” I said softly.

“Even did we charge Lady Templeton with acting in her own interest,” Frank countered, “the benefit to Louisa must be considerable. She might be returned to the circle in which she was born; her sons receive every advantage presently denied them; and her infant daughter be reared in the most select society. What mother could turn aside?”

But I was hardly attending. I was in the grip of an idea so dreadful I could barely pronounce it.

“You said, Mr. Hill, that the property was disposed in the above manner, if Mrs. Seagrave were married woman. “There is another provision, surely?”

Mr. Hill drained his Madeira to the dregs before replying. “It is a preoccupation of your Great Man, I find, to grasp in death what he could not obtain in life. The Viscount was a very Great Man; and his spirit of fun, shall we say, was commensurately large. Louisa Seagrave will inherit the entirety of her father's fortune, and her son become the next Viscount, without recourse to guardians, trustees, or settlements—provided that when the will is read, Mrs. Seagrave is already a widow.”

¹
John Nash, the foremost architect of the late Georgian and Regency period (1752-1835).—
Editor's note.

Chapter 25
What the Lady Knew

cont.

~

“D
EAR
G
OD,”
I W
HISPERED, WITH MY EYES UPON THE
ceiling of the inn's drawing-room, as though Louisa Seagrave might overlisten our words in her poisoned dreams. “We must discover what she knew.”

Frank stared. “You think it possible …”

“That she arranged for her husband's dishonour? Paid off Eustace Chessyre to commit an act so obscene, the entire Navy must take notice, and charge Tom Seagrave with a violation of the Articles of War? Entirely within the range of her powers, I assure you!”

“But that is madness—to send her husband to the gallows! No woman could contemplate such an act! No wife could be capable of it!”

I did not reply. Restlessly, I commenced to turn about the room, my fingers smoothing the pleats of my gown. “What did Louisa know of her father's will, and when did she know it? From Lady Templeton, as lately as Thursday, when I found the two together in Lombard Street? Or far earlier—before, let us say, the
Stella
sailed in January under sealed orders? How much time would Louisa require, to effect her husband's ruin?”

“If she were well-acquainted with Chessyre—and he had been her husband's lieutenant for many years— very litde time at all,” answered my brother grimly.

I wheeled upon Mr. Hill. “You said, I think, that the Viscount began his decline a month ago?”

“That is as the papers would have it. But the death itself was quite sudden.”

“And the
Stella Maris
engaged the
Manon
some seven weeks since. If we would have Louisa responsible for Chessyre's plot, then we must accept the idea that she knew of the Viscount's provisions well before her father's illness. In a communication from Lady Templeton, sent during the Christmas season, perhaps? Or—if the Viscount's
sense of fun,
as you call it, extended to the torment of his daughter—in a communication from the gentleman himself?”

My thoughts raced as a fevered pulse; but the gentlemen followed as swiftly behind. We all of us spoke in lowered tones, in deference to the public nature of an inn.

“The moment of the Viscount's passing is immaterial,” Mr. Hill pointed out. “What is vital is the moment of his interment—and the subsequent reading of the provisions of his will. Mrs. Seagrave today is no different than she was before; but by the dinner hour on Tuesday she might be anything.”

“We may exonerate Lady Templeton of murder at least,” observed my brother ironically. “You have provided her with the strongest inducement to ensure Tom Seagrave's survival. Without him, Lady Templeton gets not a farthing to administer or spend.”

“We must interrogate the aunt regardless,” I said, “though we must venture into Kent to do it. Without intending to incite murder, Lady Templeton may have done so with simple gossip. If she was aware of the Viscount's provisions before his death, and communicated them to her niece—”

“It cannot prove that Louisa Seagrave decided to murder her husband,” Frank insisted impatiently. “And by so contrived a means! She should better have put arsenic in Tom's plum pudding at Christmas, than attempted a hanging by court-martial!”

“Poison will out,” I reminded him. “How much more to be preferred, is an official disgrace—an impartial judgement—a public hanging… and the widow rather to be pitied than suspected of evil. The entire affair bears the mark of Louisa's subtle mind.”

“And yet, not subtle enough,” opined Mr. Hill. “For Mrs. Seagrave to achieve the object you would set her, Miss Austen, she must have effected her husband's death by Tuesday at the latest; and you must admit that
that
is not very likely.”