by Joan Aiken
Thomas followed Scylla to her room, where she was packing a few books into a box.
“Why, what is this!” he exclaimed in great displeasure, looking at the stripped, tidy chamber. “I do not understand. What is going on here?”
“I am removing myself to Petworth House,” Scylla told him composedly. “Mrs. Wyndham has invited me.”
“Removing to Petworth House? But why should you do such a thing?” He seemed really shocked and disturbed; much more so, Scylla thought angrily, than at the news of Fanny’s arrest.
“I do not wish to remain here, Cousin.”
Now he became angry. “You cannot leave me like this! What about my poor girls—with no one to comfort or advise them?”
“They have you, Thomas,” Scylla coldly pointed out. “For the rest, they must manage as I presume they did before you married Fanny.”
“It will look very bad if you leave me! People will say that it looks as if we have quarreled—as if you do not trust me!”
“To tell you the truth,” Scylla replied, vigorously knotting a cord around her box, “I do not care a groat what people say. You and my brother had quarreled—I think it best that I leave your house.”
Glancing about her, she stepped toward the door. “No! I shall not let you slip away as easily as that!” cried Thomas.
He moved swiftly to intercept her and grasped her by the wrist. Even with only three fingers, his grip was unnervingly strong.
“Thomas! Will you please let me go!”
“No, I will not!” Now he had both wrists. “Can you not see—do you not realize—what your presence means to me? You cannot leave me now! You are my one comfort, my one hope for the future—the only star in the blackness that surrounds me!”
She exclaimed in horror, “You should not be saying these things to me! You are not yourself! I wish to hear no more—pray be silent and do not give me pain by talking in this manner. Have you no thought for Fanny—for your wife?”
As only answer, he encircled her with his arms and kissed her violently, repeatedly, bruising her mouth, while she struggled in vain to free herself. Indeed, she was amazed at his strength; short, thin, sallow, unassuming Thomas seemed to have the vigor, the tenacity and power, of a man twice his size.
“I love you, I love you!” he panted. “You and only you! I do not care any more what you may have been to other men—which, I must confess, did trouble me at first. But now my love for you has grown so great that I can overlook such considerations—” kissing her furiously and beginning to thrust her toward the tidy bed. “I must have you! I must and will make you mine.”
Sobbing with rage, Scylla managed to tear herself loose from him and ran to the door. Snatching the key from the lock, she slammed the door as he started after her, and locked it on the outside. Then she ran to the front hall. Her luggage could be fetched later—she would return to Petworth House on foot. But outside the door she found Lord Egremont’s chaise waiting for her, and her larger bags already bestowed in the boot. She had only to put on her pelisse and go. She had left the Hermitage only just in time, she told herself. Her lip was beginning to swell up—she would have to tell Liz that she had knocked it against the bedpost. Describe the scene that had just passed she could not—it was too horrible, too disgusting.
* * *
Scylla remained at Petworth House for a number of weeks. Her life there settled into a quiet routine. Other visitors came and went, but she saw little of them, Lord Egremont and Liz fully comprehending that she preferred dinner on a tray in her room or in the library.
Almost every day she went to visit Fanny in the jail at Chichester; one of the Egremont carriages was placed unreservedly at her disposal. Fanny’s demeanor on those visits was always the same: quiet, uncomplaining, withdrawn. She expressed thanks for whatever was brought her in the way of fruit, reading matter, and clean linen. She would not accept pity or sympathy, reiterating that the calamity had been her own fault. She never asked why her stepdaughters did not come to see her.
The family at the Hermitage were far from happy. Permission had been given, after the inquest, for the funeral of the murdered child. This took place privately at night, little Thomas being interred next to his grandmother. In spite of the precautions taken to keep the ceremony secret, however, word leaked out, and a number of townspeople made their way to the spot and watched in silent hostility while the tiny coffin was lowered into the ground. As Thomas and his daughters hastily climbed into the carriage afterward, a voice cried: “Murderers! Who killed your own child?” and the crowd shook their fists and booed. Handfuls of snow and stones from the roadside were thrown after them. Later that night several ground-floor windows were broken, and the word MURDERER was written on the door in red paint. Thomas was obliged to keep the downstairs windows shuttered, even in the daytime, to protect his daughters from the hostility of his neighbors, who walked down the lane and stared at the house as if they expected to see somebody emerge from it red-handed.
Scylla heard this news from the Petworth House servants, who were perfectly well informed as to local feeling. Rumors about the illness and death of Thomas’s first wife had now percolated through the town, and suspicion had swung back from Bet to her father; it was generally agreed that a man who had murdered his first wife would think nothing of doing away with his child; any question as to motive was easily dismissed. “’E be a broody, niggly sort o’ fellow—likely the child grizzled and riled ’im. Or maybe he were where he didn’t oughter be, making up to the nurse girl—an’ the child woke, an’ seed ’im there!” Poor Jemima came in for some suspicion, and so did Scylla—she had to give up walking in the town after one or two shouts of “Paget’s whore!” had disconcerted her in the street.
After four weeks the case was due to come up before the Petworth magistrates. Lord Egremont had instructed his own solicitor, a man called Burrows, to act for Fanny, since Thomas, both in public and private, continued to accuse Fanny of having committed the crime, so that Throgmorton, the Paget family lawyer, could hardly act for her. No word had come yet from the Asp or from Cal. But one evening, a couple of days before the court was due to sit, Lord Egremont came into the library where Scylla was sitting. He looked harassed and perplexed, as he so often did these days.
“I have the man Goble here,” he told her.
“Oh? What does he say?” Scylla inquired eagerly. She was much inclined to think that in Goble there lay some clue to the whole affair.
“Oh, I do not know! He is a strange fellow, a little touched in his wits, I fear. He spun a long rigmarole about the ghost of Paget’s dead brother—I think he would have me believe that he came back from the next world and committed the murder. A most unlikely notion! He did say one thing that struck me, though,” pursued Egremont. “It seems that when he can’t sleep he rambles about the Hermitage garden, which he did on that particular night; though, from his account, somewhat after the time when the crime must have been committed; and he says that first he saw a ghost, or Token, flitting about—the ghost of poor Ned Wilshire, he asserts; and then, later, he saw Thomas Paget himself come through the gate from the Glebe Path and enter the Hermitage by the garden door.”
Scylla’s interest quickened. She asked, “Was Cal with Goble at this time?”
“Yes. The two of them were sitting quietly in the little shelter at the end of the yew-tree walk. Cal said to Goble, ‘Hush, there goes Paget. Don’t let him know we are here, I’ve no wish to be further embrangled with him.’ I asked Goble was he sure, and he said he could not mistake; Paget was wearing a waistcoat and an open-necked shirt.”
“An open-necked shirt? On a snowy night? Goble must have been dreaming!”
“Well, so I began to think; especially as, at that point in the tale, he ran off into a long Bible quotation about the children of the unrighteous. I fear that his evidence would be laughed down in any court.”
“He said nothing more? He did not mention anything that was on his mind, that had been troubling him?”
Egremont gave her a quick look.
“No, he did not. But I felt that he was troubled. What makes you ask?”
“I think he divulged something to my brother—perhaps confessed something he had done. But I have no right to speak of it—my brother did not tell me what it was. It was a confidence.” Uncontrollably she burst out, “Lord Egremont! Suppose they find Fanny guilty—what then?”
“My dear, there is no need to be looking so far ahead. This is only a preliminary hearing, you know, at the Magistrates’ Court. Next will come the Assizes—by which time, more evidence may have come to light.”
“But suppose they do find her guilty?”
He said reluctantly, “It is very unlikely that she would hang. She might serve a life sentence in prison—perhaps thirty years.”
“Thirty years!”
“Very likely she might be transported to one of the penal settlements in the colonies.”
This information was of small comfort to Scylla.
Meanwhile the Admiralty had divulged that the Asp had been ordered to the Mediterranean, with dispatches for Lieutenant General Charles Stuart, now campaigning against the French in Minorca. Lord Egremont had sent messengers posthaste to intercept the ship at Plymouth, where she would be likely to put in to take water, but, as ill luck would have it, she put in at Falmouth instead and set sail before they could catch up with her. The Asp was a particularly swift vessel, and, though messages were sent after her by other ships, it was plain that Cal could not be expected back within a couple of months.
The Magistrates’ Court session was brief and businesslike. Fanny, brought back to Petworth for the occasion, appeared pale, quiet, and collected, dressed in a plain black gown with a veil over her head. Thomas was in court, but he did not approach her, and she never looked in his direction. Formal evidence was taken. Fanny’s solicitor announced her intention of pleading not guilty, and the session was adjourned “pending the return of further witnesses, at present unavailable.” Public curiosity was aroused by the plural case of “witnesses”; whom else, besides Lieutenant Paget, could this denote? From mouth to mouth passed the information that the gardener at the Hermitage, Henry Goble, was to have been called, but he was missing; had not been seen for several days. Where could he be?
An unpleasant feature of the proceedings was the behavior of the accused’s husband, Captain Paget. Dr. Chilgrove had endeavored to prevent his being called, on the grounds that he was suffering from “mental incoherence” and was so shaken by what he had undergone that no reliance could be placed on his testimony. The objection was set aside, however, and he was called, but immediately burst into a loud, screaming denunciation of his wife, “who had turned his son into a half wit,” and became so hysterical that he had to be led from the courtroom. This outburst increased the public prejudice against him, and he was booed, while a murmur of “Shame” went up as Fanny was led away back into custody. Indeed, her solicitor demanded that she be released on bail, but this the magistrates refused to allow, giving the reason that her incarceration was for her own protection.
Scylla had hoped to speak to Fanny after the hearing, but the behavior of the crowd outside the town hall became so ungovernable that the constables had to smuggle the prisoner away by a side entrance and into a closed carriage, before her enthusiastic sympathizers could mob and trample her.
Thomas, gloomily returning home, was startled by the sight of his daughter Martha, blooming and pretty, with an unusual air of matronly decision about her.
“Where the devil have you come from?” he growled at her. “Wherever it is, you may just go back there! You have no place in my house anymore!”
“I have not the least wish to stay in your house,” sharply retorted Martha. “I came to hear the court session, and what I heard decided me to take Patty back with me to my house. This is no place for a child her age. You may come too, Bet, if you like.”
Bet, though affronted at this casual invitation from her younger sister, nevertheless decided that almost any place would be more cheerful than the Hermitage and went off to pack up some clothes for herself and Patty. Thomas raged at them all, but somehow without conviction; he did not really care if his daughters remained or departed. Without waiting to bid them farewell, he strode away to his garden room.
Twenty
The body of Henry Goble was discovered beside a tombstone in the new graveyard. Public shock and horror at this second death, following so rapidly after that of poor little Thomas Paget, was mitigated by Dr. Chilgrove’s assurance that no foul play need be suspected. Inspection of the body had satisfied him that Goble had been carried off by the dangerous disorder of peripneumony, evidently brought on by chill and exposure acting on an already strained and enlarged heart which the doctor had been treating for some time with foxglove essence. It seemed plain that the poor man had been taken ill while tending the grave of Edward Wilshire, for he still clasped in his hand a bunch of crocuses that he must have been intending to place in a crock that stood nearby.
“Wretched man!” exclaimed Scylla when Lord Egremont brought her this news. “Cal will be excessively sad to hear of his death. I think he had grown truly attached to the old man, even in the short space of time that they had known one another. And now what is to be done? His testimony in court, however distracted, might have been worth something; now it is lost. All circumstances seem to favor my cousin Thomas! I believe he has sold his soul to the devil.”
“Not quite all circumstances,” Lord Egremont said. “I have here a letter from my friend James Henriques—”
“That good-for-nothing,” muttered Liz Wyndham, who was sitting with them in the Petworth House library. “What use in the world can he be?”
“Not quite good for nothing, love, for he writes:
“Relative to your recent disturbances in Petworth, I am indeed shocked to read in The Times that your charming little neighbor has been charged with the murder of her child. It may have some bearing on this matter & be worth your knowing that Mrs. Liliane Baggot (who is at present living under my protection) affirms with certainty the following: viz., that Capt. Paget during an unguarded and expansive moment once swore to her that he had succeeded in doing away with the first Mrs. P. & wd not hesitate to get rid of the second should she prove as intransigeant as she bid fair to do. Mrs. B. wd be prepared to repeat this statement in Court but asks that, if possible, she may be spared this Horrid ordeal.”
“She might as well,” remarked Liz, shrugging. “What is it, after all, but a spiteful piece of tittle-tattle?”
“Yes, very true, but investigations as to the death of the first Mrs. Paget might bring something to light. If only we had one piece of evidence of a more substantial nature!”
Unknown to Lord Egremont, such a piece of evidence was preparing, but it was not to come to light until some weeks later in the cold, bleak spring.
Meanwhile in Calcutta the new Governor General, the Earl of Mornington, resolved to strike at Tippoo Sahib’s French-trained army and instructed his younger brother, Arthur Wellesley, with General Harris, to begin moving troops toward Seringapatam, the capital of Mysore. In the Mediterranean a combined Russian and Turkish fleet had captured Corfu. Marshal Suvorov, at the head of his Russian troops, had entered Milan. Buonaparte, having written urging Tippoo Sahib to overthrow the British in India, had set out on an overland march across the eastern desert toward Syria. Only the port and fortified town of Acre barred his passage eastward. And toward Acre the sloop Asp was making all speed with urgent dispatches.
In England the snow melted, fell again, melted again. And on the far side of the Shimmings Valley, Farmer Fewkes’s cows, having scavenged in vain over the sodden hillside for a few mouthfuls of nourishing grass, raised their voices in complaint, lowing and bellowing their hunger and di
ssatisfaction.
“Drat ’em,” said Farmer Fewkes to his man Tom. “They be growing as thin as clothes props. Ye’ll have to give ’em a few more prongfuls o’ Rector’s hay, Tom.”
* * *
Some weeks later, in Chichester jail, Fanny received an unexpected visitor. She had endeared herself to the wardresses by her gentle, diffident politeness; although accorded special privileges, she never presumed upon these, and performed any tasks set her with diligence and docility. Several of her kindly jailers were prepared to swear that she “could never have done that wicked deed” and would have been glad to shut their eyes to any small infringements of prison discipline. But Fanny never asked for any. Now, however—
“Here’s a Lieutenant Paget to see you, love,” said the day wardress, putting her head around the cell door. “By rights you’re only allowed to be visited by husband, lawyer, or closest female relative—but we’ll just say this one’s your husband, eh? It’s the same name, so what’s the difference? And he never comes, anyway,” she muttered disapprovingly, retreating and shutting the door.
Fanny almost fainted from surprise.
“Cal! I had thought you were in the Mediterranean Sea!”
“So I was. Oh, Fanny! My dearest dear! How can you bear it here? My poor love—what you have been through!”
It was very natural to find herself in Cal’s arms, and the comfort of being there was so great that she was tempted to embrace him back, but withdrew herself, saying shakily:
“Indeed, we must not! Besides, what would they think—” glancing toward the grille in the door. “But, Cal, how in the world do you come to be here? I was never so astonished!”
She gazed at him, still hardly believing in his appearance, absently taking in the fact that he was very thin and looked pale under his sea tan.
“How do I come to be here? I posted direct from Portsmouth—and am on my way now to Petworth to make a deposition to the magistrates there. I shall tell them—what, I am sure, Goble already has but my testimony will add strength to his—that we saw Thomas in the garden on the night of—of your baby’s death; that he wore shirt and trousers only, and looked wild and haggard. At the time I thought his strange appearance to be a result of our quarrel, but now I believe it was due to guilt and horror over the deed he had just committed. Do you not think so too?”