I dashed to the empty bed frame and felt beneath the tumbled coverlet. The Bengal chest was gone.
“But who can have taken it, Henry?” I demanded for the tenth time as we endeavoured, late that night, to restore order from chaos. “Philmore is mute on the subject and Morris is adamant that Philmore had nothing in his hands when he stepped through the window. We have searched house and garden alike.”
“Then we must assume Morris was too late, Jane,” my brother patiently replied, “and that Philmore gave the chest to a confederate before quitting the house himself.”
“One man alone cannot have accomplished all this,” my mother agreed, from her position of collapse on the sittingroom sopha. She was lying at her ease with a vinaigrette and hartshorn, the better to observe our labours. “I should think a party of ten much more likely.”
“One such another as Philmore is sufficient,” I retorted, “to make off with my chest and destroy it forever. I could throttle the man from sheer vexation!”
“Tho’ strangulation is unlikely to encourage him to speak,” Henry supplied.
Philmore’s story was that he happened to be passing the cottage when he noticed a light and observed the shattered window. Approaching with the intention of offering his services to Mrs. Austen, as he said, he swiftly ascertained that none of the family was within — and plunged with no other weapon than his fists into a battle of the most fearsome kind. Philmore had fought a man — a man he could not describe — and tho’ he emerged without a scratch upon his person, had been so soundly beaten as to lose his senses, and awoke some time later to find the miscreant gone. He had met with Mr. Prowting’s man Morris upon exiting the window, and had been most cruelly set upon, tho’ he endeavoured to explain the virtuousness of his actions.
Mr. Prowting declared this a Banbury tale, and insisted that Philmore’s soul was black with guilt.
When taxed with the disappearance of the chest, the joiner had preserved an awful silence. Neither threat of hanging nor the prospect of a protracted lodging in the Alton gaol could move Philmore to a confession, save to utter the obvious: he had no trunk in his possession at present, and could not be proved to have made off with it. This was a sticking point in Mr. Prowting’s deliberations — and Philmore clearly believed it should secure him from guilt in the eyes of the Law. The magistrate muttered darkly about charges and the Assizes, but Philmore only stared at his boots with that expression of satisfaction I had previously observed so strongly writ on his countenance.
“He is hardly the disinterested hero,” I mused, “and believes himself in possession of a fortune, Henry. He will not split on his confederate, however, for fear of losing the same. He intends to profit from his appearance of innocence — and guard the truth of the chest’s whereabouts like a bulldog. We shall have to use other means to discover the name of his accomplice. I mean to have my papers returned.”
My brother paused in collecting the scraps of fabric my mother intended for a pieced quilt. Any number were ruined with ink.
“What exactly does the joiner believe he has stolen, Jane? A King’s Ransom in jewels, as is popularly believed — or an unknown object of great worth to another party?”
I stared at him. “You would suggest that Bertie Philmore took the chest without knowing what it contained? — That he was set to steal it, by his confederate or. or another person?”
“Perhaps he was offered a considerable reward,” Henry said mildly. “By someone who had reason to know that our entire party would be from home this evening.”
“One of Mr. Middleton’s guests?”
“Any number of our fellow diners would give a good deal to know what Lord Harold has written about them, by your account.”
“That is true,” I said blankly, a scrap of fabric in my hands. A parade of faces revolved in my mind: Jack Hinton, whom I had observed in urgent converse with Philmore only the previous day — and might easily secure a key to the cottage from his nephew, James Baverstock; Julian Thrace, who might find in Lord Harold’s papers an end to all his ambitions; and Lady Imogen, who should regard the chest as her chief weapon in a ruthless struggle to preserve her inheritance.
“So you see — it is possible the chest has not been destroyed after all,” Henry concluded. “Nor may it be so very far away. It is something, is it not, to consider our genteel neighbours in the light of thieves?”
I confess I did not sleep at all well last night. I left Cassandra to unpack her things in peace this morning, and descended to the sitting room, where my brother Edward was arranged in a chair with his elegant hat balanced upon one beautifully-tailored knee. He looked every inch the Squire of Chawton, and an established man of property — save for the expression of deadness in his eyes I understood too well.
“My dear Neddie,” I said as he rose to greet me, “how very good of you to bring my sister all this way from Kent!”
“I could wish that I had come sooner,” he observed, “when I hear what has been happening in my absence. The corpse in the cellar and the invasion of the cottage are bad enough — but Mamma would have me to understand that you have been greeted with a degree of coldness from the local people that I must find offensive, Jane!”
“Mamma refines too much upon a trifle,” I replied easily.
“The Prowtings and the Middletons have been kindness itself.”
“Jack and Jane Hinton are hardly trifles,” my brother retorted. “They are mushrooms of the very worst order, for all that their father was a clergyman. Shall I remove your party to the George until these distressing matters are settled?”
“And what then? Are we to live in an inn all our lives? Or quit Hampshire in defeat, and know ourselves to be the laughingstock of the entire county? No, no, Neddie — allow us to fight our battles on our own ground, if you please. You must consider your dignity as Squire. Your claim to Chawton and all its goods is under the most subtle of attack in the court of publick opinion. It will not do for your tenants to believe you shaken.”
He studied my countenance an instant before his own gaze dropped to the floor. “I have been idle too long. My cares and my grief — my privileged misery — have occasioned neglect.”
“I fear that is true — however much my knowledge of your excellent propensities would excuse it. Your tenants, Neddie, hesitate to give you a good name. There is much resentment among the common folk: over the eviction of Mrs. Seward, who must leave her home of many years and give way to us; and a dozen other paltry matters that loom unfortunately large in Chawton minds. You would do well not to leave the neighbourhood without a thorough audience with all the outraged parties. You could do much to win back good will, Neddie, did you only exert yourself.”
His eyes came up to my own. “And the happiness of those I leave behind me, you would suggest, depends upon that exertion?”
“It does. We can endure all manner of slight and injury at present, provided we have reason to believe in future good. We have this consolation at least: our standing in the village can only rise.”
“I believe,” Edward said with careful consideration, “that I shall make it known among the tenants that I will hold Quarter Day at the George tomorrow. And I shall make every effort, Jane, to hear their grievances to the last detail. Even if I must remain a fortnight to do it.”
“That is excellent news. We should dearly love to keep you in Hampshire so long.”
“But first, I must pay my respects to Mr. Middleton. Do I ask too much — or will you walk with me to the Great House?”
We encountered all the Stonings party as we achieved the entrance to the sweep: Julian Thrace and Charles Spence astride a pair of high-blooded horses, walking mettlesomely at either side of Lady Imogen’s carriage. The gentlemen reined in, while the lady put down her window and extended her gloved hand to me and my brother. He stared at her an instant too long, as tho’ entranced and horrified at one and the same moment — and too late, I saw the danger. Lady Imogen, in all the freshness of two-and-twenty, could boast a dark beauty reminiscent of his dead Lizzy’s own.