“I agree. There is a dignity in her carriage — a sweetness of expression unmarred by her traffick with the world — that must impress the observer with a belief in her goodness. I cannot make it out at all. I believe I shall have to pay Miss Radcliffe a call.”

“Pay her a call!” Eliza cried, scandalised. “Jane, you would never venture to such a den of iniquity! Only think if you were found out! I should not be able to look your mother in the face — and only conceive how lowering to reflect that in this instance, she would be justified in her poor opinion of me!”

“You speak as tho’ you are already acquainted with Miss Radcliffe,” Mr. Chizzlewit said.

“We have chanced to meet some once or twice. She was first raised as an object of interest with the Comte d’Entraigues — it is Julia Radcliffe he is said to wish to marry, when once he obtains his divorce.”

Mr. Chizzlewit’s countenance changed colour. “That old roué! It does not bear thinking of! Why, the girl is young enough to be his daughter—”

He rose, and took an agitated turn about the room.

“I understand she is but seventeen. But recollect what the Comtesse has told us: Miss Radcliffe pressed the jewels upon her as recompense. It would appear that she has made her decision — and means to seek a respectable alliance, even at the price of d’Entraigues.”

“Impossible!” Mr. Chizzlewit spat.

I shrugged, as tho’ indifferent to his contempt. “Then perhaps she merely intends to use d’Entraigues to secure the interest of another. Miss Radcliffe’s name is frequently linked to Mr. George Canning’s. But my sister assures me that Canning is unlikely to desert his wife and children — however much amusement he may find in salons of Harriette Wilson’s type.”

“Canning’s eldest son is lame,” the solicitor observed, “and Canning and his wife are both devoted to the boy. He would not so wound his family — and there are considerations of public office—”

“Then Miss Radcliffe deludes herself. Her affections, nonetheless, may be ardent and real — and thus could be used to villainous ends, when urged by an unscrupulous man. Mr. Canning has at times been described to me this way.”

“Unscrupulous?” Mr. Chizzlewit’s brow furrowed. “It is not a word I should apply. Bold in his ambitions, yes — implacable in his hatreds — but there is nothing in his career one may point to, as being less than honourable—”

“Even his efforts to unseat Lord Castlereagh, behind that gentleman’s back?”

Mr. Chizzlewit laughed. “Oh, well— If you would speak of politics!”

“Do not the laws of honour apply, in the House of Commons and Lords? I was assured that was why Lord Castlereagh felt no compunction in challenging his enemy to a duel — and humiliating him before the world. He did but defend his honour. It has been suggested to me that Mr. Canning, in fact, was so reduced in his public stature that he has an interest in revenge — and that in Princess Tscholikova he found his tool.”

The solicitor was standing near Eliza’s fireplace; he thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned his head to stare broodingly into the flames. I said nothing further, allowing him time for thought.

“You would have it that Canning deliberately created an aura of scandal around Castlereagh, through the publication of the Princess’s letters, and her subsequent appearance of suicide,” he said at length. “For that to be true, the Princess must have been in his power — or intimate to a degree we cannot have understood. How else can he have obtained what was private correspondence?”

“She refers to Canning at least once in her journal, which I have had occasion to read. She also mentions Julia Radcliffe — and is determined, but two days before her death, to warn the girl. I use the word because the Princess chose it.”

“Warn Miss Radcliffe? Against whom? I find the notion fantastic!” Mr. Chizzlewit cried. “Could Canning have both Tscholikova and Miss Radcliffe in keeping? And if the Princess was as deep in love with Castlereagh as her letters suggest — how should she have come to entertain Canning’s schemes? She must have known him for his lordship’s enemy.”

“You go too swiftly, Mr. Chizzlewit, in assuming that Mr. Canning is the sort to show his hand! What if he were to employ an intermediary — a gentleman long known to Princess Tscholikova, one she has reason to trust? A man known equally well to Julia Radcliffe … and a man Canning has often employed before?”

He looked up from his contemplation of the flames. “D’Entraigues?”

“I knew we should return to Emmanuel presently,” Eliza said comfortably. “For how else could we come to the jewels? Julia Radcliffe got them somehow!”

“But why should d’Entraigues steal them?” Mr. Chizzlewit argued. “It should be the height of folly to do so!”

“He needed something to lay as tribute on the Radcliffe altar,” Eliza suggested reasonably. “You told us yourself — the world entire is showering that girl with baubles and frivolities! And poor Emmanuel has not two guineas to rub together! But how diverting that his tribute should come directly back to his wife!”

The solicitor shook his head. “D’Entraigues is too old a man of the game to preserve so dangerous a piece of evidence as that treasure. If he stood behind the Princess’s death, he must certainly deny all knowledge of her. The jewels alone might hang him.”

“Then how came they to Julia Radcliffe?” Eliza demanded.

“Is it not obvious?” I looked from my sister to Mr. Chizzlewit. “Princess Tscholikova gave them to her.”

Chapter 23

Willoughby’s Shade

Monday, 29 April 1811

ELIZA’S FRIEND, MRS. LATOUCHE, IS A FAIR-HAIRED and plump little woman with protuberant blue eyes, who dearly loves to talk a good deal of nonsense about her health, her clothes, and her acquaintance among the ton. Born Mary Wilkes in Kingstown, Jamaica, she embarked at seventeen upon a storied career: marrying first Mr. Edward East, a widower with several children, to whom she dutifully presented two more, before his taking off with a fever peculiar to those island parts. In the handsome swell of her twenties, she bestowed her hand, her surviving child Miss Martha East, and her late husband’s considerable revenues from the production of sugar, upon Mr. John-James Digges-Latouche, also of Jamaica. Mr. Latouche eventually rose to such distinction as a Governor-Generalship of that island; when he died, his widow determined to sell her holdings and her slaves, and decamp for England — the better to puff off her daughter in a respectable marriage. But Miss East did not “take,” and the hopes that buoyed her first Season in the year 1798, have long since gone off. Like me, she is now firmly upon the shelf, and appears to find that it quite suits her — a spinster lady of some five-and-thirty years, established in all the style and comfort of Portman Square. As she may expect to inherit her mother’s fortune when that lady’s aches and nerves put a period to her existence, Martha East is hardly to be pitied.

She is decidedly unlike the round little Dresden doll that is Mrs. Latouche, being tall and angular, with what one must presume are her father’s sharp features. Moreover, Miss East is of a bookish disposition, quite formidable in her understanding — and has taken to wearing spectacles and a cap. In honour of Sunday dinner among friends, it was a lace cap; and Miss East looked very grand last night in her amber-coloured silk. She might almost have been headmistress of a school for girls, and her mother her incorrigible pupil.

I am chiefly useful to Eliza on such evenings in monopolising Miss East’s attention, so that my sister might have a comfortable coze with Mrs. Latouche — and canvass all the latest spring fashions. Miss East, I observed, was armed and ready with conversation from the moment of our arrival in Portman Square, for she held in her hands a volume of Mary Brunton’s Self-Controul.[23]