“Mrs. Salkeld,” I called, “I have found success! Russell may retrieve the barrel at his convenience, and convey my thanks to the under-gardener.”

“I'll not be a moment, miss,” Mrs. Salkeld called to me comfortably from the kitchen passage, “once I've just sent this teapot up to poor Miss Sharpe. Rang for Daisy, she did, and another fire; the cold's that penetrating today, what with the rain.”

I left her muttering over the ways of governesses too fine to work for their bread, and smuggled my burden into the library. With the gentlemen gone, it should be quite deserted of life; for Lizzy would spend the better part of the day dressing in her boudoir, in respect of her condolence call at The Larches.

I am sorry to say that Miss Sharpe's letters divulged little to my plundering eyes. However incomplete the attempt at burning had been, the fragments were well-nigh indecipherable. The power of my own sight is indifferent at best, from the adverse effect of writing and sewing in every manner of light; and it was only through the adoption of my brother's quizzing glass — discarded near a pile of tradesmen's bills left lying on his desk— that I could discern anything at all. What emerged under the influence of a stronger lens was a smattering of letters, that trailed off disobligingly: affect? affection? or affable? — mise — chemise? promise? — and then, quite starkly, the entire word death.

I sat back on my heels abruptly at that, and considered. My affection for you, I promise, will endure unto death. That should fit Fanny's reading of the situation. Or perhaps it had said: Such an affable reception, in your white chemise — I am sure you caught your death! Or perhaps the fragments were drawn from separate letters, and together would make no sense whatsoever. In either case, the endeavour was hopeless. I had found just enough to tantalise, and too little to enlighten.

I examined the rest of the fragments in a desultory manner, conscious of an allusion that had escaped me. What was it? Affection? Promise? Nothing to do with those; they were words so debased by the traffic of every day, as to have lost any charge of meaning. Death, then — it must strike any reader dumb with its awful truth. And perhaps the word chemise.

Mrs. Grey, indeed, had found death in her chemise.

I shivered from a cold that owed nothing to the rain, and looked sharply once more at the fragments of paper.

The fractured words, it is true, could tell me little. But I had neglected to consider of the hand.

A firm hand, and yet light in its strokes, like the finest sort of engraving. There was the S, scrawled distinct in the —mise, like a sail unfurled on a t'gallant yard. I had seen this hand before, tho' only briefly. It was the distinctive sloping script of the Gentleman Improver, Julian Sothey.

Chapter 16

End of a Sporting Gentleman

24 August 1805, cont'd.

TOWARDS NOON MY BROTHERS RETURNED FROM THE Hoop & Griffin in Deal — travel-weary, drenched to the skin, and quite put out of humour.

Denys Collingforth's body had revealed nothing of the nature of his murderer, and far too much of the grisly manner of his demise. Henry, I understood from several delicate intimations of the Justice's, had been quite sick for a quarter-hour together, and could not be brought to look upon the corpse again; Neddie had only suffered it through the application of a handkerchief to the nose, and a stout brandy to the stomach.

The cords of the neck were severed quite through, my brother told me, and must have spattered the murderer's clothes in the cutting. Neddie had hired a team of local labourers to dredge the millpond whence the body was recovered, and scour the surrounding underbrush, in the faint hope of discovering the murderer's discarded clothing, which might yet bear a tailor's or a launderer's mark; but he held out very little hope of their discovery. A clever man, who had planned Collingforth's death, might as easily have carried a change of clothes, and burned the bloodied ones along the way. Or he might simply have disguised his sins with a voluminous driving cape until achieving the sprawl of London. There any amount of refuse might be discarded undetected.

“And how was Collingforth's body recognised in Deal?” Lizzy enquired, a faint line of confusion between her brows.

“He had been seen in that town on Thursday morning, by one of his acquaintance — a Mr. Pembroke, not unknown among the Sporting Set. As I understand it, Pembroke makes a tidy profession of cheating at cards, Lizzy; and Collingforth was formerly intimate with him. He espied Collingforth loitering in a doorway in a shabby part of town, looking quite desperate; and as Pembroke could not believe him capable of murder— he had heard the news of Mrs. Grey's death, and the result of Wednesday's inquest — he undertook to shield his old friend. He carried Mr. Collingforth away to his rooms, and kept him there, drinking brandy until after dark. Poor Collingforth was almost beside himself at the news of the charge laid against him, Pembroke said— and they agreed that the best course he might adopt, was to get himself away to the Continent. The Downs anchorage is at Deal, you know — and Pembroke charged his friend with buying a passage on any ship that might soon weigh anchor, and be away. Indeed, he pressed some money upon Collingforth for that express purpose, although he declined the office of arranging the matter for him — Pembroke was loath to entangle himself in the flight of a man charged with murder.”

“As he was quick to point out to Mr. Justice Austen,” I murmured, amused. “Have you questioned this fellow narrowly, Neddie? He seems entirely too plausible. Might he not have helped Mr. Collingforth into the millpond, for a small consideration between friends?”

“I am before you, Jane,” my brother retorted with a smile; “I have learned, independent of Mr. Pembroke, that he parted from Collingforth at ten o'clock. His landlady — an elderly, quite disinterested personage — was required to bar the door behind the two men, and found them utterly disguised with drink. Pembroke met with an acquaintance in the street, who bore him away to a cock-fight, and remained in his company some hours; Collingforth, much muffled as a surety against discovery, set off towards the Downs anchorage. That is the last that Pembroke saw of him — until learning by chance that a murdered man had been found on Friday, and was lying at the Hoop & Griffin, he stopped to view the corpse.”

We were all silent an instant, in consideration.

“And so Mr. Collingforth never booked his passage,” I mused. “One is compelled to wonder why. Was he afraid of discovery? — Or discovered, in fact, between the time he parted from friend Pembroke, and fetched up at the quai's steps?”

“If the landlady may be believed, and Collingforth was decidedly in wine, he cannot have posed much resistance,” Henry observed sombrely. “Two stout fellows— or even one in his right senses — might have bagged him as easily as a bird.”

“I cannot think that many of the townsfolk should have recognised him,” Lizzy objected. “Deal is above sixteen miles from his home at Prior's Farm! He cannot often have had occasion to go there.”

Neddie shrugged. “Denys Collingforth was generally to be found wherever there was a matter of sport — or a wager that might be laid against it. I should not be surprised to learn that he was known, among certain circles, in every town in Kent. And you forget, my dear, that he was a hunted man. I posted an offer of one hundred pounds for his retrieval, unharmed — a handsome sum, in the eyes of many.”

“And thus sealed his death warrant,” I concluded, “for whoever killed Denys Collingforth had determined that he should not return unharmed. Such an eventuality could hardly serve the purpose of Mrs. Grey's murderer. Better he should die, and the whole affair die with him.”