HERE I PAUSED IN MY LETTER TO CASSANDRA, AND SAW again in memory my brother's weary face. It was after ten o'clock when he and Henry returned from the race grounds, and we had the comfortable library entirely to ourselves. Henry threw himself onto a sofa and yawned hugely; Neddie stood in thought by his desk. I had determined not to plague them with questions, being content myself to rest a few moments in my favourite room.

The library, with its five tables, two fireplaces, countless volumes, and eight-and-twenty chairs, is in the newest part of the great house. The first Mr. Thomas Knight added two wings, east and west, nearly thirty years previous; and tho' the entire family is wont to live in the generous space, summer or winter, spurning the chilly grandeur of the more formal drawing-rooms, it sometimes happens that I command the library in splendid solitude. This is a richness not to be carelessly forsworn; for in a house that boasts the frequent presence of nine children — their number increasing with a stupefying regularity — solitude and peace are luxuries dearly bought. But my brother's goodness admits of few limits; he comprehends my need for daily reflection, and the delight I take in the house's privacies; and shoos his numerous progeny to the garden when “Aunt Jane requires her rest.”

“And so you are not abed.” Neddie swung round and peered at me from his place by the unlit hearth. “I am glad of it, Jane. I should soon drive poor Henry mad with my mutterings; he has borne with them too long today.”

“Not a bit of it.” Henry eased off his top boots with a sigh. It should not be remarkable if the feet were swollen, after hours of imprisonment in such fashionable footgear. “I shall be all attention to the despicable business, once I have heard from Jane how the Commodore does.”

“He was sold to the knacker not three minutes before your return,” I told him with conscious cruelty, “and I doubt he shall make a better meat than he has a race-meeting.”

“For shame! The lad was merely weighted too heavily. And he does not like the dust. Give the Commodore a splendid wet muck and he will tear the course to blazes. But truly, Jane — you saw he was looked after?”

I sighed. “A bucket of oats and an hour's rubbing-down. Your groom would hardly do less; I believe he led the nag at a walk the full seven miles between the meeting-grounds and Godmersham, Henry. You have no cause for fear.”

“Not for fear, perhaps,” Neddie observed, as he flung himself into a chair, “but his concern nonetheless does our brother credit. Yours is a most forgiving nature, Henry; you lose your fortune and mine in backing the beast, and yet are anxious to know whether it ate its dinner well. Were I disposed to transgress and disappoint, I should wish to fall into your hands. I might then be assured of a gende reckoning.”

“Unlike the unfortunate Mrs. Grey,” Henry observed. “She certainly met with more brutal treatment.”

Neddie regarded him quizzically. “You incline, then, to the theory of a husband pushed past endurance?”

“I incline to nothing,” he protested. “She might as readily have been strangled by a broken gamester, mad with backing the wrong horse!”

“Better to have strangled the Commodore, then,” I murmured.

Neddie bent his gaze upon me. “What say you, Jane, to Henry's notion?”

“I may say nothing, until I command a greater knowledge of the particulars. Why should you believe Mr. Grey the culprit? Was not he far from the scene, in London?”

Neddie laughed abruptly. “She is as sober as a judge, our sister! If it is particulars you fancy, Jane, then you shall have them. I could not suffer you to remain in ignorance, when all the world will soon be talking of the matter.”

He rang for wine, and when it had been brought, consumed a little in silence. It was Henry who related the history of the perch phaeton, its scandalous novel, and the letter it contained; and when he had done, I puzzled a moment over the matter.

“Like you, Henry, I cannot incline towards one theory or another,” I declared at last. “We must attempt to ascertain whether Mr. Valentine Grey was indeed in London at the moment of his wife's end — and whether he had reason to suspect a dangerous entanglement with The Unknown. It would not go amiss, either, could we put a name to the lady's lover. But until such things are laid plain, it must all be conjecture. And injurious conjecture at that.”

“So we thought as well,” Neddie said from his corner. “And having concluded our inspection of the phaeton, despatched the greys to their stable under the watchful eye of the tyger, and charged the Canterbury constabulary with the safekeeping of the carriage — Henry and I proceeded to pay a call upon The Larches.”

“The Greys' estate? No wonder, then, that you were so long detained!”

“Indeed. We have tramped through half the neighbourhood in pursuit of justice, and found not a hint of it within fifteen miles of the coast. It has all fled to London, I suppose, out of a terror of French cavalry.”

“And did you discover Mr. Grey in savage looks, with pistols at the ready and his housekeeper for hostage, intent upon the defiance of the Law?”

“Hardly. Imagine our surprise, my dear sister, to find Grey as absent as foretold, and the house in possession of strangers.”

“Strangers?” I echoed, intrigued.

“Perhaps that is not the correct word,” Henry broke in hastily. “But they certainly could not be considered as forming a part of the household.”

“Enough of riddles!” I set down my wineglass with decision. “I am not young Fanny, to be diverted at a word.”

“Can not you guess whom we found in the saloon, rifling the dead woman's desk for all they were worth?” Neddie's eyes glinted with something too acute to be called amusement.

“I cannot,” I retorted helplessly. “I never heard of Mrs. Grey until this morning, and cannot hope to name her intimates.”

“Captain Woodford and Edward Bridges,” Henry said apologetically, “and both of them much the worse for wine.”

“Good God!” I cried; and then, “How can you look so roguish, Neddie? Think what this must mean for Lizzy, if Mr. Bridges's name should be linked in scandal to Mrs. Grey's! And Captain Woodford, too — of whom Harriot has such hopes! It does not bear thinking of.”

“I believe it is my Lizzy who has hopes of the gallant Captain,” he amended. “Harriot's feelings, like those of any modest young lady, must be presently in doubt. I cannot be expected to consider of Harriot, if she will not consider of herself.”

“Pray, pray, be sensible, Neddie!”

“You disappoint me, Jane,” my brother replied drily. “You do not show the proper relish for intrigue. I had expected more, from Henry's account of your doings in Bath last winter. I thought you quite enslaved to a dangerous excitement.”

If I threw Henry an evil look, and received an air of insouciance in return, I may perhaps be forgiven.

“Captain Woodford we may explain,” I managed eventually. “I understand that he has been on terms of intimacy with Mr. Grey from boyhood, and might naturally wish to be present when the gentleman returned. Perhaps he hoped to shield his friend from the full weight of such terrible news. And Mr. Bridges might merely have accompanied him.”

“Tho' they travelled in separate equipages, and seemed distinctly out of charity with one another.”

This must give me pause.

“Captain Woodford would have it that they had come to condole with Mr. Grey,” Henry threw in, “tho' he could tell us nothing about that gentleman's movements, or when he was expected from London. And poor Mr. Bridges was decidedly red-faced and mumchance — either from the effects of wine or the ruin of his hopes, for I know him to have backed the Commodore to a shocking extent. At first he suggested he would condole with Grey as well, until Captain Woodford abused him to his face for a blackguard and a liar. It would have ended in Bridges calling the Captain out, had Neddie not intervened.”[13]