“Good God,” I said, and sat back down abruptly, my legs giving way at the knees.

“Now,” Bill Skroggs said softly, “why don’t you tell us all about it, eh? What’s this confidence you don’t care to violate? — That you slit the Princess Tscholikova’s throat, and left her for my lord Castlereagh to find?”

Chapter 10

Banbury Tales

Thursday, 25 April 1811, cont.

ELIZA GASPED AT THE RUNNER’S WORDS, AND BURST into tears; Manon broke into a torrent of French, gesticulating with wine glass and vinaigrette; and as she advanced on Bill Skroggs, his partner moved to the drawing-room door and closed it firmly, his broad back against the oak.

“It was you gave the jewels to old Rundell,” Skroggs said, pushing Manon aside as he approached me, “and you who have a story to tell. I’ll give you a quarter-hour, Miss Austen, by my old pocket watch; and when the time’s sped, it’s off to Bow Street.”

I have rarely found occasion to wish that among the myriad professions pursued by my brothers — clergyman, banker, sailor, and gentleman — at least one had embraced the Law. In truth, the few country attorneys thrown in my way have been prosy individuals, devoid of humour, exacting as to terms and precise as to verbiage, with a lamentable relish for disputation. In this hour of desperate peril, however, I yearned devoutly for a hotheaded barrister in the family fold: one who might knock Bill Skroggs on his back with a single blow, before serving notice that his sister was not a toy for the magistrate’s sport. What I detested most in the Runner’s manner was his easy assurance of my venality — no hint of sympathy or doubt lurked in those hard, pale eyes. Innocence was unknown to Bill Skroggs; in his world every soul was guilty of something. His exultation was like a hound’s that has caught the fox between its teeth. In this I understood the depth of my danger.

Some fleeting thought of Sylvester Chizzlewit coursed through my brain — but such an exquisite gentleman would surely be dining in his club at this hour, and beyond the reach of supplication. Eliza was no support in my hour of need: a lady who has had recourse for fifty years to fits of the vapours, hartshorn, and burnt feathers cannot be expected to show steel in extremis. I should have to attempt to offer Skroggs the truth, and turn the snapping dog on a rival scent.

“You labour under a grave misunderstanding, Mr. Skroggs,” I observed, “and one that is likely to cost you your prize money.[11]  I know nothing of Princess Tscholikova or her death—”

“But you know these rubies and emeralds, and you were cool enough to tell a Banbury story to old Rundell. Isn’t that right, Mr. Black?”

“Acourse it is,” Clem Black agreed.

“Miss Austen purported to have inherited the swag from the Duke of Chandos, only Rundell had seen the jewels before, and noted the occasion in his ledger. The jewels belonged to Princess Evgenia Tscholikova, who departed this life on Tuesday last. Rundell had the cleaning and resetting of her gems four months since.”

“Acourse he did,” Clem Black agreed.

“I have already admitted I told Mr. Rundell an untruth,” I interjected unsteadily. “I regret the necessity that argued such discretion. An acquaintance begged my sister, Mrs. Austen, to broker the valuation and sale of these gems — and I agreed to stand as their owner. We assumed them to be solely and entirely the property of our friend.”

“This would be another Banbury story, Mr. Black,” Bill Skroggs intoned wearily.

“Acourse it is,” Clem Black agreed.

“Oh, you stupid man,” Eliza burst out. She sat up as swiftly as a cork bursting from a champagne bottle. “Can you not see that Jane and I are distinctly un-suited to the murdering of the Princess? She was a Long Meg of a woman — built on queenly lines — and neither Jane nor I is much over five feet! We should have had to stand on a footstool to cut the poor creature’s throat, and the idea of either of us possessing the nerve—”

“Ah, but there is a Mr. Austen to be considered,” Skroggs said with avuncular kindness. “It’s a gang of thieves I think of, Mr. Black, with murder on the side.”

“Acourse it is,” Clem Black agreed.

“The Austen party is ideally situated in the neighbourhood of Hans Town, a hop and a skip from the Princess’s door — Henry Austen being known to the lady, perhaps, as a man of business much inclined to lend his blunt to nobles whose purses are to let. Let us suppose he visits the Princess in Hans Place to discuss the matter of a loan, sympathises with the poor lady’s embarrassed circumstances, so far from home — kills her when her back is turned, makes off with the jewels — and puts his respectable spinster of a sister and his jumped-up countess of a wife on to the job of selling the loot.”

Eliza gasped. “Jumped-up countess! I’ll have you know I am everywhere received, Mr. Skroggs, among the highest members of the ton! The friends who might end your career in the wink of an eye are legion—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I said crossly, “but none of this is to the point. What you suggest is absurd, Mr. Skroggs, because the jewels were given to us by a Frenchwoman of our acquaintance, the celebrated opera singer Anne de St.-Huberti, and if you wish to understand how she came by them — I suggest you enquire of her husband, rather than Eliza’s. I can well imagine the Comte d’Entraigues slitting any number of throats.”

“D’Entraigues?” Skroggs gave the name a passable pronunciation, as tho’ he had heard it before. “Old Royalist fled from the Revolution? White periwig, brocade waistcoats? Fond of walking in Hyde Park of an afternoon, ogling the females?”

“The very same.”

Bill Skroggs whistled faintly, and jerked his head at Clem Black. The junior Runner thrust himself away from the drawing-room door. Skroggs gestured with a blunt hand towards Eliza’s delicate Louis XV chairs and said, with surprising restraint, “May we?”

“But of course,” Eliza returned disdainfully. She had left off hiding her face in her handkerchief, and was meeting the Runner’s gaze with furious dark eyes. “But if you dare to suggest that my husband is capable of slitting any woman’s throat—”

“I don’t say as I believe you, mind,” Skroggs offered judiciously, “but I’m willing to listen to the whole story, even if it is a Banbury tale. How did the Countess come to give you these jewels?”

Eliza told him the sordid history: how the aging singer had seen her power wane over the Comte d’Entraigues; how she had feared for her future, and confronted the demand for divorce; how she had turned to a friend from her salad days, Eliza Hancock Austen, Comtesse de Feuillide, because of the memories the two ladies shared of glittering nights at Versailles. Eliza threatened to veer off at this point into a side-lane of reminiscence, regarding a prince of the blood royal and a musical evening in the Hall of Mirrors; but a delicate kick from my foot returned her to the thread of her tale. She explained how she had considered of her husband’s reputation— the probity of his banking concern — the ubiquity of rumour — and urged her sister Jane to pretend to ownership of the Frenchwoman’s jewels.

“We know no more than you, sir,” I added when Eliza had paused for breath. “It would seem incredible that Anne de St.-Huberti is in ignorance of the gems’ origin, for she certainly cannot pretend to have held them for years. But perhaps she thought to profit by the sale, did the pieces go unrecognised— and avoid all connexion, if their owner should be divined.”

“But, Jane,” Eliza protested, “that cannot explain how Anne came by the Princess’s jewels. You cannot believe her cognizant of … of … ”

“ … Murder?” I supplied. “Any woman who has survived the Terror with her neck intact, must have grown inured to bloodshed. But it is possible, my dear, that she knew nothing of the jewels’ origin— but was given them to sell by her husband, and enacted a Cheltenham tragedy for your benefit, replete with Barques of Frailty and threats of divorce. It is all a farrago of lies, naturally.”