An unaccustomed thrill of fear ran through me, and I rose from my seat. Two additional doors stood at either hand, on opposite sides of the great desk; these, too, were closed.
“You need not eye the passages so hungrily,” Spence told me. “I am not so ill-prepared. When I wish to be private with a woman, and have ample notice of the fact, I undertake certain precautions. No one will come except at my express summons, and no one will hear you, Miss Austen, should you cry out. Pray do me the honour, therefore, of answering my questions — and do not be wasting your time on a fit of hysterics.”
“You clearly do not know me, sir,” I informed him coldly. Of Edward, even now walking up from the stables — of which Major Spence could have no view — I chose to say nothing. I merely preserved my position before the desk, and faced him.
“In your letter of yesterday you mentioned a certain article stolen from your cottage in Chawton, Miss Austen.”
“A Bengal chest of curious workmanship, filled with a quantity of papers. Yes, I did mention it — and still believe it to be in your possession.”
“My possession?” he repeated, in an incredulous accent.
“From Lady Imogen you have passed to me as your thief? I shall take care in future to guard my acquaintance most carefully, if the result of every dinner among friends is to be a criminal accusation.”
“A man who had nothing to hide should have no need of locking doors.”
He laughed bitterly, and leaned against the massive desk.
“Did you think to malign the Dead, Miss Austen — and be paid off for your silence? Was that your object in petitioning the lady’s steward in such frank terms? What is the price to be put upon scandal? How much, to preserve my poor darling’s frail name, in the hours remaining before her interment?”
“You misunderstand me, sir.”
“Do I?”
“I wish only for the return of my property.”
“And if it cannot be found?” He thrust himself away from the desk and approached me menacingly. Despite my best intentions, I shrank back before his advance. “Tell me about this chest. Describe it. For I have looked in her ladyship’s apartment — have set her maid to searching high and low — and nothing can I find but what accompanied the Earl’s daughter from London.”
“It was quite large and heavy,” I replied, “and should certainly be obvious. Perhaps two feet wide by three feet long — with a curved lid and massive hinges. There was a lock set into the front, which could only be opened by a key in my possession — unless force were used against it. The contents were a quantity of papers.”
“And why should Lady Imogen care for this thing?”
“Because she thought to find the truth in it.”
His brows came down in a heavy frown. “The truth? What truth?”
“The details of Julian Thrace’s parentage.”
“Why should the slightest clue to that renegade’s origins be held in a chest of your keeping, Miss Austen?” he demanded contemptuously.
“The papers it contains were penned by one who may have witnessed Mr. Thrace’s minority — a friend of the Earl’s, Lord Harold Trowbridge.” I offered my replies as the commonplaces they were. I did not doubt that Spence already knew the answers to his questions. Why, then, did he pose them? — To suggest, in my mind, an ignorance I could not believe he harboured?
“You have read these papers, then?” he demanded. “You interest me greatly. I have long wondered where Thrace sprang from. Tell me, Miss Austen, if you know.”
“But surely, sir, Lady Imogen shared the fruit of her researches? From her easy manner on Saturday, I had assumed that she learned from the documents that Thrace was a fraud — and had informed him of as much. That seemed the only possible compulsion under which the man should act to murder her ladyship: so as to suppress her proofs, before they should be communicated to the Earl.”
Spence threw up his hands in an attitude of bitterness. “I was not her ladyship’s confidant. And I will tell you, Miss Austen — there is no chest here — and there never was! The existence of such a chest, I put it to you, is entirely a fabrication of your own — devised for some mischievous purpose!”
“And yet,” I returned quietly, “the man who stole it from my cottage is sitting even now in Alton gaol — and names you, sir, as his employer.”
For an instant, gazing at Spence’s grim features, I quailed. But then his figure lost its air of tension, and he appeared once more in command of his usual calm.
“Impossible,” he said. “I know that for a lie.”
What certainty had he grasped? What knowledge could so reassure him in the midst of self-righteous rage?
Old Philmore, I thought. Spence believes me to refer to Old Philmore. And he knows the man is missing. A deliberate knock resounded on the door at the far end of the room. Charles Spence called savagely, “I asked not to be disturbed!”
“I beg your pardon, sir.” Rangle’s reply was muffled by the heavy mahogany. “I thought the present circumstance an exception. The Earl of Holbrook is only now arrived from Brighton — and is most anxious to speak with you.”
I was saved a most uncomfortable period by the descent of Freddy Vansittart on the scene. Charles Spence, after standing frozen for several seconds, advanced hurriedly to the library door and threw it open.
“Major!” barked a massive figure looming in the doorway.
“What the deuce do you mean by closeting yourself with a female when Imogen’s but two days dead? Where’s my poor girl to be found? Must see her, when all’s said and done. Dreadful business. Thrown from her horse — and Immy a neck-or-nothing gal from the time she could walk! Don’t make sense. Mark my words, I told that banking chap as brought the news — mark my words, they’ll find the Devil was in the business. And so it proved! Poor Julian! A wolf in sheep’s clothing — or a wolf in a coat cut by Stultz, come to that! Poor boy. I should not have thought him capable of such an offence. So where’ve you put her, Spence? Must be a rum thing, this time of year, what with the heat. We’d better see the rites observed, and no delay.”
The speaker was a bluff, florid-faced man in his early fifties, clearly a martyr to gout and the claims of a voracious appetite.
The brim of his beaver glistened with the wet, and, as I watched, he handed it carelessly to Rangle along with his many-caped driving coat of kerseymere. The Earl’s frame must once have been powerful, but was now sadly gone to fat. The charm so marked by Lord Harold in his youth, could be only a memory preserved in the barking impetuosity of his speech. I thought I detected in Lord Holbrook’s lively eye, however, a ghost of the rake he had once been; and tho’ he betrayed no excessive sensibility at the loss of his only child, I noted a quality of strain in his countenance, as might suggest a sleepless night, and the hard travel born of necessity.
“My lord,” Charles Spence stammered. “This is most unexpected. I had understood you to be posting to London.”
“What — and have the remains sent up to Town, and August almost upon us? No, no, my dear chap; Imogen must be interred here in the family tomb. I am persuaded it is what the girl would herself have wished. We can ask the Steventon clergyman to say the Holy Office — I believe he also serves at William Chute’s pleasure. What’s his name? You know, the thin, reedy, prosy fellow who fancies himself such a punishing rider to hounds.”
“Mr. James Austen.”
“That’s the ticket!” the Earl replied, brightening. “But no, dash it all, Spence — Austen was the name of the banker chap. One who came to Brighton.”
“We are a numerous family, my lord.” I curtseyed to the Earl.
“Miss Jane Austen, sir,” Spence supplied in a colourless tone. “She and her brother were present when Lady Imogen was thrown. Mr. Henry Austen then rode with despatch to Brighton. We are all in the Austens’ debt.”