Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery

by Stephanie Barron

  “UNACCOUNTABLE,” I SAID AS we rattled over the icy cobblestones towards Steventon once more. “Lieutenant Gage married—it is in every way unaccountable!”

  “Only if you assume that Mary Gambier understood the case,” Raphael West returned. “It is probable that she was as ignorant of his circumstances as we were. Despite her clear attachment, she cannot have known him long or well. Gage was too often absent on his duties, and absent from England.”

  “Her brother told me that the Lieutenant was perpetually in service to Lord Gambier—following him about the Continent as a sort of aide-de-camp.” I glanced at William Chute. “That is unusual in the Navy, to be sure, but the Admiral has been turned on shore these several years, and his duties have lain in administration rather than command. I suppose Lieutenant Gage served him as secretary, rather in the way you employ Benedict L’Anglois; and no mention of his personal life ever arose.”

  “To be sure,” Chute replied. “I believe Miss Gambier made Gage’s acquaintance only last summer, in Brighton. But to think he chose to marry such a woman! She is not at all like Mary Gambier—and we must hope Mrs. Gage knows nothing of that lady’s existence, or sad end. Thank God Bolton did not wish to hold an inquest on Miss Gambier’s death—only consider of the embarrassment for all concerned!”

  We were silent a moment, while the early winter dark slowly took possession of the carriage interior. The flickering lights of the side lanterns became more pronounced against the dusky backdrop; I reached my toes to the hot brick, refreshed at the Angel, and wished I might already be at Steventon, in the privacy of my bedchamber, to consider of all I had learnt. I felt oppressed by the sordidness of The Vyne affair, beyond anything I had yet known; a weariness of deceit and betrayal overcame me.

  “I could not help remarking that Mrs. Gage lives in Portsmouth,” Raphael West said quietly. He opened his sketchbook and held one page to the side-lantern’s light. I could just make out the image of a woman and child; he had been drawing Amy Gage while Chute questioned her. In the shape of the boy’s head and the almond eyes, I recognised the technique of Benjamin West—who conjured from every such pair a Raphaelite Madonna.

  “Half the Navy resides in Hampshire,” Chute returned indifferently, “when they do not live in Kent.”

  “But our spy,” West concluded, “was discovered in Portsmouth—at the very Bosun’s Whistle Mrs. Gage is known to frequent.”

  THE SEVENTH DAY

  21

  LET OUT THE OLD YEAR

  Saturday, 31st December 1814

  Steventon Parsonage

  New Year’s Eve saw an end to the thaw. We awoke to a sky lowering and ominous, and a temperature sunk into its boots. Clouds built up all morning as Cassandra and I strolled briskly down Steventon’s solitary street, to fetch chickens from one villager, cheese from another, and fresh bread from a third. We had invited Caroline to accompany us on our brief shopping expedition, and she was everywhere greeted with deference and affection as “Rector’s Young Lady.” We encountered a spinster Miss Sutter, a lady of uncertain years in genteel decline, who was happy to renew her acquaintance with “dear Mr. Austen’s daughters,” and appeared anxious to trace the outline of our younger selves in Cassandra’s countenance and mine. But it is nearly fourteen years since we quitted the parsonage for Bath with our parents, leaving it to James’s care—and that is a period. Every pore of one’s thought and existence is changed. Miss Sutter turned next to Caroline, who was shifting from one cold foot to another.

  “And you have lately been staying at The Vyne, I hear! What a Christmas treat, to be sure! Such grand gentlemen and ladies!”

  No word of murder had penetrated through the snows, it seemed, to Steventon. Yet.

  “And how is your Mamma? Lying down upon her sopha—or improved in health, with all the charm and distraction of her guests?”

  Caroline justified the faith I have lately been placing in her quickness and understanding, by refusing to answer such leading questions, and merely displayed Jemima to Miss Sutter’s dazzled eyes. The faeries had come up to scratch this morning, delivering a redingote of Prussian-blue wool; just the thing for a freezing walk along muddy lanes. Once Miss Sutter had declared herself amazed at Jemima’s stile and beauty, we pled the cold and hurried back to the house.

  Mary, having been torn from all the richness and stimulation of The Vyne, had declared herself most unwell this morning, and descended into what her son, James-Edward, called “a fit of the dismals.”

  “Is that a sample of Edward Gambier’s cant?” I enquired interestedly.

  “Thomas-Vere’s,” he acknowledged with shy pride. “I had no notion, Aunt, that he was such a great gun—for he is a clergyman, after all, and generally speaks in that high-pitched manner. But from Gambier’s chaffing when we played at billiards, I came to know that Thomas-Vere is quite the man-about-town. Up to every rig, as they say! Although apparently he keeps exotic fowl in his lodgings, which he did not care to bring to The Vyne. I confess I did not quite understand. But perhaps I did not attend fully.”

  “Exotic fowl?” I repeated, my brows raised.

  “Gambier was joking Thomas-Vere—all in fun, of course!—about his pockets being all to let, and Thomas-Vere unable to meet his losses at billiards, on account of his Bird of Paradise,” James-Edward explained. “I gather Gambier has seen the bird when he was up in Town. But perhaps it is an exotic flower, and not a bird, after all? It must be very dear, particularly in the cold of winter months.”

  And from what I knew of Birds of Paradise—a euphemism for a brilliant Light-skirt, a Comfortable Armful, or a Bit of Muslin, Thomas-Vere’s Bird would be just as expensive in the heat of summer, when she took to parading in Hyde Park in next to nothing at all. He might wish to keep his mistress secret from his intimate family; but then again, he might be required to approach them for a loan. Thomas-Vere was an admirer of opera—and opera dancers were not happy long on a clergyman’s pittance. If the lady was a true High-Flyer, she would soon demand jewels and a pair of match-greys for her cunning phaeton. Had Thomas-Vere found another source of income?

  Selling his brother’s political secrets to the highest bidder, perhaps?

  Entanglement with Birds and their inevitable expence laid even the most discreet gentlemen open to blackmail; and Thomas-Vere was never discreet. If Edward Gambier had chosen to broach the subject before a Winchester schoolboy, he must assume the Bird of Paradise was common knowledge.

  Or that Thomas-Vere, suitably warned, might pay well for silence.

  I mounted the stairs to my room and sat down with this journal and pen. There is nothing like a bit of ink to bring reason to the most disordered mind.

  SUSPECTS

  Murder of Gage Murder of Miss Gambier

  William Chute with his kennel master in his bed?

  Eliza Chute planning Children’s Ball in her bed?

  Thomas-Vere Chute absent some moments in his bed?

  Edward Gambier playing alone at billiards in his bed?

  Benedict L’Anglois unaccounted for absent in London

  I looked up from the page. The movements of our party were variable at the time of John Gage’s death. But anyone might have administered laudanum to Mary Gambier’s food or drink. The only person entirely cleared of her murder was Benedict L’Anglois. He had returned to The Vyne less than an hour before her lifeless body was discovered, and no doubt the stable lads could attest to his horse’s arrival. That interval was insufficient to effect murder; when found, Miss Gambier had been dead some hours. She is so cold, Edward Gambier had cried. Will no one help me?

  Did innocence in one death clear L’Anglois of the other? Quite probably. There could not be two guests at The Vyne determined upon violence.

  Mary, Cassandra, and I had been fixed with Eliza in the morning room at the moment Lieutenant Gage’s neck was broken, our movements known. Of the remaining ladies, only Lousia Gambier—unattended in her bedchamber—and Mamma, at her needlework in the
library, had gone unobserved. The breaking of a strong young man’s neck, however, suggested the killer to be male. Edward Gambier or Thomas-Vere might have done it. So might my brother James.

  Or Raphael West.

  I knew where the first two gentlemen claimed to have been at the moment of the Lieutenant’s death. I should probably discover that my brother was lost in slumber upon a settee in the Saloon at the time. Gambier claimed to have glimpsed Raphael West in the Chapel that morning—but at what hour, exactly? Mary Gambier could have told me—could have supported or denied Mr. West’s search for a secret passage. To the ice house. Where Lieutenant Gage’s murderer had lain in wait for a trap to be sprung.

  But Mary Gambier, most inconveniently, was dead. Or was her loss a convenience, in fact, to Raphael West?

  MARY BEING INDISPOSED ON her sopha this morning, and James closeted in his study about his sermon for the morrow, the Austen ladies were free to command the parsonage staff. I ordered brisk fires in the principal rooms, and dressed the mantel with evergreen boughs. Mamma sailed into the kitchen and gave her orders for dinner, which chiefly concerned the freshly killed chickens just procured. Cassandra commenced the baking of mince-pies. The housemaid and cook, being newly returned from a protracted interval of leisure, proved cheerful and ready enough to do our bidding. Cook broke into a lusty performance of “Greensleeves” as she plucked the chickens, and Sarah the maid set James’s man—I cannot call him a footman even in pretence, as he was rather a factotum of labour—to chopping more wood. All was light and happiness within; it was quite the parsonage of old. Without, snowflakes began to fall as the candles were lighted.

  “Jane,” my mother said conspiratorially as we eyed the mahogany table in the dining parlour, “I do not think we can contrive a castle carved out of a block of sugar, but could we not arrange some greens for the centre? And do you think we ought to declare our intention of departing for Chawton on the morrow—as with all the bloodletting at the Chutes, my heart has quite gone out of remaining for Twelfth Night?”

  I bent to the sheaf of boughs that James’s man had cut for us and carried it into the house. “Tomorrow is Sunday, Mamma. You never travel on the Sabbath.”

  “Monday, then. Surely that will be long enough for propriety’s sake?”

  I did not wish to return home yet—I should be disappointed of any chance at solving the puzzle of Mary Gambier and Lieutenant Gage—but I apprehended that my mother was finding her son and daughter-in-law’s establishment hard to bear. “Only consider that the children shall be made unhappy. We promised them a fortnight’s visit. And you have not yet met with half your old acquaintance in the neighbourhood!”

  “It is true that nobody has seen my reticule,” she said regretfully.

  “Only think how sad for them.”

  “I do not count Eliza Chute, for she has many fine things, and is accustomed to town bronze.”

  “Even she admired it, however. But if Mrs. Digweed of Dummer were to espy it, or one of the Miss Terrys, you must be satisfied.”

  As tho’ I had conjured it, a loud rapping was heard at the front door. We waited for the result, the greens for the table suspended in my hands. Presently the housemaid appeared with a parcel, wrapt in butcher’s paper and twine.

  “Christmas pudding, ma’am,” she said briefly, “with Mr. Portal’s compliments, and would all the Austens please join them at Ashe Park for dinner tomorrow. Five o’clock. They keeps country hours at Ashe,” she added, of her own volition.

  “Dinner!” My mother looked to me in doubt. “I do not know what James will say. He does not believe in Sunday travel any more than I do.”10

  “The Portals live but two miles away, Mamma,” I said reasonably. “Mr. Portal will send his carriage—he knows that my brother keeps only a gig. And it is New Year’s Day. Surely that takes precedence over stricter principles?”

  “Do not be telling James so.” She fidgeted a little with a candlestick and a beeswax taper. “I am sure Mrs. Portal would wish to see my reticule.”

  “How could she not? You know that Papa, were he here, should never hesitate.”

  And so it was settled. We added the Portals’ excellent pudding to our store of delicacies intended for this evening, and set Cassandra to wheedling brandy out of James. It is not quite a Christmas pudding if one cannot set fire to it.

  Even Mary found the strength to rise from her sick-bed, on the promise of a gaiety tomorrow.

  WHEN MY FATHER WAS alive, New Year’s Eve was a time of singing and dancing at the parsonage. The Rector led the festivities, inviting all his acquaintance into these small rooms, and bestowing his sprigs of mistletoe on the young ladies. There was wassail, and roaring fires, and tables creaking under the weight of good things; for no matter how many mouths George Austen had to feed, his benevolent heart was open to every chance friend. I remember theatricals, as well—I wrote some of them myself as a girl of thirteen or fourteen—and one splendid Christmas when all my brothers were at home, they consented to play in a grand production with my beloved French cousin, Eliza de Feuillide. My brothers are scattered and Eliza is in her grave; but I wish that Caroline and James-Edward were treated to similar amusements. If one is forbidden to indulge every sort of silliness as a child, one is bound to do so when grown.

  And so this evening I performed a ritual from my vanished girlhood. As the parlour clock began to strike twelve, I opened the kitchen door to let the Old Year out. Then I hurried along the passage to the parsonage hall, and on the stroke of twelve, threw wide the front door to let the New Year in.

  Huddled in her shawl, Cassandra came to stand by me. Snow was falling, and the world looked white and clean.

  “There should be a dark-haired gentleman waiting to enter,” she said. “For good luck.”

  I pushed away the thought of Raphael West, and embraced Cassandra. “Never mind, my dear. We have done without him all these years, well enough.”

  10 Use of a carriage was frowned upon during the Sabbath, which was considered a day of quiet religious contemplation.—Editor’s note.

  THE EIGHTH DAY

  22

  GOSSIP

  Sunday, 1st January 1815

  Steventon Parsonage

  It was I who crept into Caroline’s room this morning, with a neat walking dress of bronze-green French twill and a nut-brown wool spencer, trimmed in the same bronze-green. Bonnets being difficult to fashion for a head so small as Jemima’s, I had settled for a brown velvet turban dressed with a bronze-green feather, trimmed down from one I had purchased at Burlington House while in London last month. Caroline was already awake, and stared at me soberly from beneath the bedclothes.

  “It is a splendid costume, Aunt,” she said. “But I do not know when she will find a use for it.”

  “She should wear it while taking the air in Hyde Park.”

  Caroline’s grey eyes fixed upon mine. “We never go to London. We never go anywhere. The most interesting place I have been in all my life is The Vyne.”

  “You have been to Chawton,” I attempted.

  She lifted her shoulders. “Jemima cannot wear her ball gown there.”

  “You might pretend to be in Hyde Park. Or at the Coming-Out of an Earl’s daughter. With your wit, Caroline, you might travel anywhere—and carry Jemima with you. For what do we possess minds, if not to broaden our experience?”

  “It is not experience if it is only in your mind,” she pointed out.

  Discomfiting child.

  “Perhaps when I next visit Uncle Henry in Town,” I said recklessly, “I might take you with me.”

  “Truly, Aunt?” She sat upright, her countenance all eagerness. “May we visit Astley’s Amphitheatre?”

  “How could we not?”

  “And attend a pantomime at Covent Garden?”

  “Uncle Henry’s new lodgings are directly opposite Drury Lane.”

  Caroline threw her arms around me. “I do love you, Aunt Jane. You never make one feel sinful, in
longing for pleasure. Or hopeless of ever attaining it.”

  My heart suffered a queer ache. I might write about love and marriage in my novels; my wit, like Caroline’s, could transport me anywhere. But she was right—pretend is not the same as experience.

  “Dress yourself warmly for church,” I advised. “If you contrive to appear the ideal Rector’s daughter, you may win Papa’s permission for a London visit sooner than you think.”

  THE SNOW WAS DONE by the time we exited St. Nicholas’s several hours later, but we were chilled to the core. I downed several cups of scalding tea upon my return to the parsonage, before ever breakfast had been laid in the parlour. But the sky began to clear as we finished our repast, and a faint sun shone; everywhere about the eaves of the house came the sound of dripping water.

  By four o’clock, when we had changed into evening dress and were assembled in the front hall awaiting the arrival of Mr. Portal’s carriage, the coverlet of white was gone and the main road returned to churned mud.

  It was a heavy two miles behind Portal’s excellent horses to Ashe Park. My brother James rode beside us on his hunter, to afford the ladies more room; and inside the carriage most of us were serene.

  “How good it is, to be sure,” my mother exclaimed, “to renew old acquaintance!”

  Mary sniffed. “And how tedious to be forced to rely on their equipages, for one’s social engagements! I wonder that James is not mortified to be indebted to John Portal in this way. A mill owner, to be conveying a clergyman! When James was so superior to John Portal, too, at Oxford.”

  I exchanged a look with Cassandra. It is true that the Portal family has for many years owned the mills in Laverstoke that produce the paper for Bank of England notes; but I wonder if John Portal has ever entered them. His elder brother lives in Laverstoke, tho’ he also owns Ashe Park; and so handsome is the family fortune that John might chuse to reside at Ashe merely for the asking. Mary’s petty snobberies are her sole armour against those who possess what she cannot hope to attain; that, and a general sense of ill-usage.