To this he made no reply whatsoever.
“Will you produce the note you received from the maid, or the fowling piece that killed her?”
George Hemming raised his head, and in his looks I read a seizure of doubt. Whether fuddled by drink or the torments of his own mind, he had not considered of this point when he constructed his confession.
“In the darkness above Miller’s Dale,” he said, “a man may lose his reason. When I stood over Tess Arnold’s body, I was not then myself. I cannot frankly say what I may have done, or why.”
“To use your own term, sir,” I cried, “bosh! You cannot expect me to believe, that having undertaken to kill Tess Arnold — having drawn her out in the dead of night by subterfuge — you then left her body in plain view of the walker’s path above the Dale, and returned to the river so soon as the following morning! Recollect that you were seen to have taken tea here at the inn with us on the night of the maid’s death; and it was then you extended the invitation to all our party for a drive to Miller’s Dale! Are we to believe you so cold-blooded a killer, that you may drink tea and propose the angling scheme, mere hours before despatching your blackmailer? Never, sir! I refuse to credit it!”
“Perhaps I hoped that you would discover her body,” he attempted. “Is it not the way of the sinner to wish his disgrace to be known?”
“Had you felt so deep a remorse, you might have led Sir James to the body yourself on that dreadful morning. It will not do, sir. If discovery was your object, you should have killed Tess Arnold in the middle of the Bakewell green, and have done!”
Mr. Hemming stared at me; and then he summoned the faintest of smiles. “It is a pity you were not born a man, Jane Austen,” he observed, “for I certainly know whom I should hire for my defence.”
“IT IS UNACCOUNTABLE,” I TOLD LORD HAROLD THIS morning, as he sat in the inn’s parlour, one elegantly-clad leg caught in a stream of late-summer sunlight; “in every way, it is unaccountable! What can he mean by confessing to a murder it is impossible he should have committed?”
“Surely you have already found the answer, Jane,” the gentleman replied. “He intends to shield another by taking the burden of guilt upon himself.”
“But whom? Charles Danforth? No one else has been so openly the object of suspicion. Why should George Hemming sacrifice his life for Danforth’s?”
Lord Harold shrugged indolently. His face this morning was less ravaged than it had been; the activity of the past few hours agreed with him. He was not the sort of man to spend many days together in attendance upon a group of females, arranged about a well-clipped lawn. Dissipation was to Lord Harold a kind of disease.
He had ridden early into town to inform me of the outcome of last night’s events. The constabulary from Buxton had arrived post-haste at Penfolds Hall, due to Devonshire’s urgent instruction; and they had been in time to mount guard over the household, and prevent the more egregious damage intended by the hanging party. Charles Danforth had been most eager to ride upon the scoundrels himself, and had been required to be restrained by his brother, when he would have gone in pursuit; but eventually the pleading of Lady Harriot, and the calmer counsel of Lord Harold, had urged caution. Both the Danforths had gratefully accepted the Duke’s offer of aid, and of bedchambers for the duration of the siege.
At about midnight, Michael Tivey had led his men up to the door of the Danforth estate, and demanded to parley with its owner; Charles Danforth must show his face, as a Mason and a murderer, or be burnt in his bed. It was left to the Penfolds steward — a respectable man by the name of Wickham — to admit that the master was from home; and the rage of the assembled drunkards was then unimaginable. Bricks were hurled, and windows smashed; a very valuable vase of Blue John was dashed upon the front steps, and several of the raiding party gained entrance to the house itself, where they commenced to tear at draperies and harry the terrified servants, most of whom had been torn from their beds. The introduction of flaming torches to the interiors might have caused considerable destruction, had Sir James Villiers not arrived.
The Justice came upon the scene, admirably mounted and entirely cool of temper, just as the assembly were in the act of thrusting a rope over the unfortunate Wickham’s head. The rabble intended, Lord Harold told me, to hang the steward from a venerable oak that stood on the verge of the sweep. The Justice fired his gun in the air, however, summoning the constabulary at his rear, and the hanging party were swiftly routed. Several were even now sleeping off the effects of gin and blows in the Bakewell gaol; while others — including the disreputable Tivey — had fled through the darkness to the obscurity of their homes, and were unlikely to show their faces in town for some days to come. But it had been a very near thing: had the Danforths been sitting quietly at Penfolds last evening — had I failed to mount the alarm — had Sir James or the Duke been called away — who knew the event of such rough justice?
And the intervention of the Law had done nothing to allay suspicion against Charles Danforth: it still ran at full tide through the streets of Bakewell. The gentleman was protected, so the townsfolk said, by Influence. A murdered maid, without connexion or consequence, could not hope to find justice in an English court of law; Danforth’s fellow Freemasons would ensure that the crime remained obscure. The common folk of Bakewell should never sleep safe in their beds until the pernicious Brotherhood was banished from the Peaks.
They had not considered, perhaps, that they should be forced to rout the Prince of Wales as well, and most of the kingdom’s Great, if an end to Masonic influence was their object.
“Your friend George Hemming having barely diverted the public eye from his client,” Lord Harold observed, “we may assume there are not many in Derbyshire who credit the truth of his confession. But in asking whom he would shield, my dear Jane, you would beg the question of the entire affair. Who was burdened enough by Tess Arnold’s existence, that he should take up a knife and a gun to cut off her young life?”
“Whoever that person may be,” I observed, “he has gone free, while Mr. Hemming is presently in gaol.” The solicitor, I learned upon Lord Harold’s entrance just after breakfast, had pounded upon Sir James’s door at five o’clock this morning, and had begged to be put in irons. So much for the sobering effects of coffee and common sense.
“Then if you would have their cases reversed,” Lord Harold returned, “you must find the guilty party. Sir James is under no obligation to do so, I assure you. A confessed killer has walked up to his door. All that he must now do is declare the matter of Tess Arnold’s death resolved, and await the Assizes.”
“It will not do,” I replied. “You know that no sane man would pursue revenge in so haphazard a manner.”
“Many a hot-blooded gentleman has killed before this, Jane, without due consideration of the consequences,” said his lordship gently.
“I am sure that is what the jury will find in the present case,” I retorted, “but we will both know it to be absurd! Mr. Hemming’s professed method does not fit the circumstances; and his character, moreover, is quite unsuited to the manner of the maid’s death.”
“Do you know so much about him, Jane, on the basis of a few hours’ conversation? There was a time when you considered his behaviour decidedly odd.”
“And so do I still — though perhaps for different reasons.” Hard scrutiny must find that I knew little of George Hemming beyond his friendship with my cousin, and a taste for angling and Cowper. My heart declared that he was a man of merit, and my reason rebelled at the poverty of his explanation for the murder of the stillroom maid. Where reason and heart are aligned, conviction will follow.