Darcy's Trial

by M. A. Sandiford

  ‘Mr Pritchett!’ Helena cried, joining them. ‘There was no need to trouble yourself, for Harte can take us.’

  Pritchett was of medium height, but wiry and strong-looking, with stubbly red-grey hair and sharp features that reminded Elizabeth of a fox. He bowed to Elizabeth and held out his hand for her bag. ‘Harte is busy, Miss Kaye, but since I have business in the village I can take Miss Bennet and kill two birds with one stone.’

  Helena blinked in confusion. ‘Oh, I see.’ She moved towards the carriage, but Pritchett held out a hand to bar her way. ‘I think you’d better stay here, Miss Kaye, since I have other business in the village and no time to take you back.’

  Helena’s face fell, and Elizabeth said brightly: ‘She can walk back, Mr Pritchett. It’s no great distance.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, madam, we’ve been having trouble on the estate with poachers and other bad folk, and the master has asked particularly that Miss Kaye should not go out unaccompanied.’

  ‘Surely not,’ Elizabeth replied, struggling to conceal her irritation at his officious manner. ‘Why, just two days ago I walked here from Wistham with no problem whatever.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I follow the master’s bidding, not yours.’

  Glancing at Helena, Elizabeth noticed how much this exchange was upsetting her, and decided it would be best to give in. She thanked Helena again for her hospitality, then approached her for a hug, whispering: ‘We can meet up again in London next time you come. I’ll write to you if I find out anything about Lucy.’

  Pritchett coughed, looking at his watch, and with a sigh Elizabeth accepted his hand into the curricle.

  As if to make up for lost time, Pritchett rattled the carriage along the drive at such a pace that Elizabeth had to grip the armrest to avoid bouncing in her seat. She leaned across and shouted so that her voice could be heard above the clatter:

  ‘Mr Pritchett, must we go so fast?’

  He eased a fraction. ‘You’ll excuse me, Miss Bennet, but I’ve a busy day ahead.’

  They reached the road to the village, but for some reason he drove straight across along an unfamiliar track. Shouting again, she asked, ‘Should we not have turned right?’

  ‘With respect, madam, I know these paths better than you.’

  She looked round and saw the spire of the church, now gradually receding into the distance. ‘Mr Pritchett, this cannot be correct. The village is on our right and we are leaving it behind.’

  ‘The track loops round. Just sit back and relax.’

  They were in a wood, with trees closing in from both sides and the village no longer in view. As Pritchett had promised there was a slow bend to the right, and for a while she was reassured, but on reaching another junction he slowed suddenly and pulled to the left so sharply that she was thrown against the side of the carriage and banged her shoulder.

  In pain she cried: ‘That’s enough! I insist that you stop immediately. This is not the right route, and you are driving far too fast.’

  He glanced at her with a sneering smile, then turned his eyes back to the narrow path without making any reply and without slowing down. Now shivering with a mixture of anger and fear, Elizabeth made no further attempt to reason with him. Clearly some kind of abduction was in progress, and she would need to stay alert for opportunities to escape or seek help. Unfortunately at present she could do neither, since in this remote corner of the woods they met no-one, and by maintaining such a hectic speed he was allowing her no chance to jump.

  Accordingly she waited, in pretended resignation, until she saw ahead a junction where the path ahead was too narrow for the curricle to pass, and he would have slow almost to a standstill before turning. She tensed, like a cat preparing to pounce, and rehearsed in her mind a movement through which she might vault over the side of the carriage, so gaining vital seconds to run off into the cover of the trees. But he seemed to guess her intention, and with a sudden dart wrapped his powerful fingers round her left arm and pulled her into the centre of the seat.

  ‘How dare you!’ she cried. ‘Help! Somebody help me!’

  He loosened his grip a little as they rounded the corner and picked up speed again. ‘Shout away, my beauty. No-one will hear you out here.’

  She wriggled to free herself but he held her easily, and she realised there was no point fighting him; her only chance was to deploy cunning. Ceasing her struggles, she curled up in a ball and started to whimper, hoping to throw him off-guard by sending signals of passivity. He gave her another contemptuous look before swinging the carriage round to a clearing where logs had been stacked ready for chopping; at the back of the clearing stood what looked like a woodman’s cottage. As Pritchett reined in the horses, a man appeared in the doorway and for a moment Elizabeth’s hopes rose, until she recognised him as McGill, the gamekeeper—presumably in cahoots with her captor.

  McGill approached, and with a pretence of formality offered a hand.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Bennet. May I help you down?’

  ‘If Mr Pritchett would be so good as to release my arm.’

  Pritchett descended on the other side, and Elizabeth massaged her left arm for a few seconds before accepting McGill’s steadying hand. He made no attempt to keep hold of her, and she stepped away, noting that they tracked her from both sides so that she had nowhere to run.

  She looked first at Pritchett then at McGill, who had more an air of authority. ‘I think you owe me an explanation.’

  He took her arm gently and directed her towards the cottage door, increasing his grip slightly when she resisted. She wondered who awaited her inside, and with twinge of panic guessed that it might be the master himself, Sir Arthur Kaye. But the room that greeted her was empty, except for a table with three chairs and a small divan, and a kitchen area to the right with a range and a few pots and pans. She felt McGill’s hand on her shoulder, and he carefully removed her reticule and hung it over a chair. He made no reply when she protested, returning his hand to her arm and pushing her towards a doorway at the back; this led to a smaller room, lit only by a high window, and almost bare except for a thin mattress covered with a blanket, a water jug, and a chamber pot. She looked left and right, but she was alone in the room, and with a thump the door closed behind her and a bolt slid home.

  In panic, she rushed to the door and shook it hard, but it held solid. Banging on the door, she cried: ‘What is happening? Why am I being held here?’

  ‘There’s water in the jug,’ McGill replied in his unnerving monotone. ‘Food will be provided later. Don’t try to escape. You cannot get out, and will only hurt yourself. There is no point calling for help since scarcely anybody passes this way. In any case, the walls are so thick that you cannot be heard from the path.’

  ‘Answer my question! Why are you detaining me here?’

  There were footsteps in the living room and the cottage door closed. Elizabeth put her ear to the wall and tried to hear what they were saying, but their voices were already no more than a distant murmur. A minute later there was complete silence, and she supposed they must have gone. She called out several times, and beat the door with frustration, but with no result. Nobody came either to admonish her or to rescue her; she might as well have saved her energy. With a sigh she removed her bonnet and lay down on the mattress, which although thin and lumpy was an improvement on the hard timber floor, and as the implications of her incarceration began to sink in, her anger abated and gave way to fear.

  Chapter 26

  Time passed—perhaps ten minutes, perhaps half an hour—and slowly Elizabeth returned to a more reasonable frame of mind, and decided that she might as well explore her new surroundings. Her world was now a cell-like room of three paces by four, lit only by a small window too high to reach. Through this window she could see nothing bar a high branch silhouetted against grey sky. The walls were of stone, roughly plastered and whitewashed; the floorboards were broad and thick, with an unvarnished finish. She explored these surfaces carefully,
searching for weaknesses, but they were all rock-hard and apart from thin cracks in the plaster had no defects. The door was of solid oak, with robust hinges which held firm when she pushed against them.

  As she had already noticed, the cell contained only a few objects. The jug was of middling size, perhaps holding a pint or a little more, and made of pewter. The top was broad and unlidded, but the water inside looked clear and she assumed it had been recently filled. She wondered about its potential as a weapon, but the material was thin and had no sharp edges. The chamber pot was heavier, of white porcelain, and mercifully clean. It occurred to her that if thrown against the wall it might shatter, yielding shards that could be used to probe the walls or floorboards—or even to launch a desperate attack on her captors. On reflection this seemed a forlorn hope, especially when balanced against the usefulness of the device if left intact.

  Pulling the blanket to one side, she next examined the mattress. It was perhaps a yard wide, and long enough to support a man or woman of normal height. The material she thought was coarse linen, and the filling probably wool flocks, which would explain its lumpiness. She shook out the blanket, which was of rough prickly dark grey wool. For a while she speculated whether it could be fashioned into a weapon, for instance by unravelling a length of wool for use as a trip-wire, but seeing no way of fixing the ends she abandoned the idea as fanciful.

  For the rest, the room was singularly featureless, and she wondered why a cottage would have such a room at all. Perhaps for storage it might serve some purpose, but who would want to live in it? Could it be that the room had been designed specifically as a prison, and that she had not been the first unwilling occupant, but the latest in a series?

  She folded the blanket double and laid it neatly across the mattress, with the intention of lying down on the only comfortable surface available. But after a minute or two the inactivity became unbearable, and she sprang up again and began to pace. Slowly and rhythmically she took four steps to the far wall, adjacent to the window, and then four steps back to the wall adjoining the door. Back and forth, back and forth. Before long the movements became so repetitive and automatic that her environment receded into the background, no more significant than the faint rippling of the wind in the trees, and she began to lose herself in daydreams.

  She thought first how she might be rescued. Who might know, or infer, that she was being held prisoner on the Wistham estate? The most obvious person was Helena—but she would presumably assume that Elizabeth had left for London, unless she happened to call at Mrs Dobbs’s cottage and found Bertha still there. How about Bertha herself? She would expect Elizabeth to fetch her sometime, but had no reason to worry over a delay of a few days. Casting further afield, there was a chance that Bridget might send someone to make enquiries; but after their quarrel, this seemed unlikely. No, the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that the only hope lay in Darcy himself. From her letter he would know that she had been collecting evidence in Wistham, and was planning now to return to London. When she failed to turn up he would be alarmed for her safety, and with his usual heightened sense of responsibility would organise some kind of search. He could not come himself, not with the trial imminent, but he could send Fitzwilliam, or perhaps Bingley if he had returned to London …

  For a moment these reflections gave her hope, but on thinking through the implications her heart sank. By giving Darcy this extra worry at such a crucial moment, she would disrupt his preparations for the trial. Instead of seeking out evidence for his defence, Fitzwilliam and his other friends might be sent off to Leicestershire to search for her. This was the ultimate humiliation. She had risked her own safety, lied to her uncle and aunt, and sacrificed her prized friendship with Bridget, and achieved not just nothing but less than nothing.

  Recoiling from this conclusion, she imagined how she might have acted differently. She could have risen early in the morning and left on foot and in secret. Better still, she could have been satisfied with the information already gathered, and left the day before. In retrospect it was obvious that as every day passed, the chances of her being detected would rise sharply. How could she have been so naive as to suppose otherwise, given the number of people she had visited and the scandalous nature of her accusations? She recalled the curious glances she had received on the road, and the people she had asked for directions. Probably within hours the gossip had reached the ears of McGill and Pritchett, who would have wondered why she had suddenly turned up in the area asking questions of their tenants.

  A noise outside interrupted her reverie. How long had she been pacing up and down, dreaming pointlessly of what might have been? Two hours, or even longer? She felt a pang of hunger: perhaps it was lunch time and they had come to give her food? There were voices in the adjacent room, and she heard the bolt slide.

  She made a grab for her bonnet, and was beginning to fasten it when the door opened and she saw McGill flanked by a shorter man whom she recognised with a stab of panic as Sir Arthur Kaye. He eyed her up and down, a strange excitement in his eyes, before greeting her with an exaggerated bow.

  ‘Miss Bennet! How delightful that our paths should cross again.’

  Recalling his sneering over-familiar tone, she faced him coldly and replied: ‘Sir Arthur, unless you wish to find yourself in deep trouble, you will ask Mr McGill to release me now and take me back to the village.’

  ‘Would you leave us so soon?’ He reached out suddenly and grasped the edge of her bonnet, which came off when she instinctively took a step back. ‘That’s better! Now you are Miss Bennet rather than Miss Bonnet.’ He sniggered at his own joke, threw the bonnet casually aside, then withdrew from his coat pocket the small notebook that Elizabeth had been using to take notes on her investigations; McGill had presumably found it in her reticule. ‘I’ve been reading this account of your travels in Wistham,’ he said. ‘Interesting. Very interesting indeed.’

  Feeling his eyes probing her reaction, she tried to frustrate him by maintaining a calm silence. After a few seconds he disengaged with a shrug and shook out a sheet of letter paper which he must have secreted in the notebook. He opened it and waved it at her so that she could recognise the handwriting. ‘Dear Mr Darcy,’ he read. ‘With a certain event just a few days away …’ His eyes bored into her again, and this time she was unable to hide her distress. ‘You’ve been a very busy bee, Miss B. Such a pity that your precious Darcy will go to his death with no inkling of the efforts you have made on his behalf.’

  Elizabeth looked at McGill. ‘You have spies in the post office?’

  He shook his head, smiling faintly. ‘The footman Baines had instructions to show any outgoing letters to Mr Pritchett before putting them in the post. Your letter was most helpful. Before reading it we were unsure what you were about. Now we know everything.’

  Elizabeth wondered whether they could be bluffed into believing that she had sent an earlier letter informing Darcy of her discoveries, but feared that in her confusion she might only make matters worse. Totally defeated, she could offer nothing except defiance. She faced them scornfully and said, ‘You are shameless blackguards and I hope you rot in hell.’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Arthur Kaye smirked at McGill. ‘A woman with spirit! I like that.’

  He took a step towards Elizabeth, and she retreated into the room where she had been imprisoned. ‘Stay away from me!’

  He motioned to McGill. ‘Take her arms.’

  Expressionless, as if performing a routine task, McGill cornered her, spun her round, and pinioned her arms behind her back by a firm grip on her wrists. As Kaye advanced, Elizabeth tried to ward him off with her knee, but she was hampered by her dress and he easily evaded her lunge and found a safe spot at her side. From just a few inches his eyes leered at her as he ran a finger across her cheek, pulling away sharply when she tried to bite him. He plunged a hand into her hair. ‘Such pretty curls, my beauty. Why pin them up so tight?’ He pulled out the two combs holding her side
tresses, allowing them to fall freely to her shoulders, then suddenly grabbed a handful of hair and pressed his mouth to hers so tightly that her teeth were trapped behind her lips. She felt a hand pressing on her waist while its partner began to grope her right breast. With a scream she dipped her head towards the offending hand, but he saw the bite coming and stepped back, red-faced and breathless with excitement.

  ‘Now you’re mine, my lovely, and I intend to keep you for my pleasure after your Darcy is dead and buried.’ He eyed her up and down again, then said to McGill, ‘Let’s have her dress off.’

  They maneuvered her into the centre of the room and began unfastening buttons. At the top of her dress the necklace got in the way, and she felt Kaye fiddling with the clasp. With an oath he jerked it violently, pulling the beads tight against her throat before the clasp broke and he threw the necklace aside. McGill switched his grip so that he had both her wrists in one hand, and she caught the rank smell of a handkerchief which he pushed into her mouth, stifling her screams. Unable to bite, Elizabeth feigned passivity as Kaye began to peel down her dress, then suddenly straightened and looked over his shoulder towards the door, as if spotting movement in the adjoining room. Deceived, McGill loosened his grip as he turned to investigate, and like a snake her hand struck at Kaye’s face and tore across his cheek. He released her dress with a screech before dealing her a ferocious slap followed by a back-hander which crushed her upper lip against her teeth.

  ‘I’ll teach you to pink me, you vicious little harlot.’ He scowled at McGill. ‘Could you not hold her firmer?’

  The gamekeeper grasped her arms again, and with her head still spinning Elizabeth awaited the next assault. However, Kaye kept his distance, his previous excitement replaced by a look of defeat, perhaps even of fear. Seconds passed in indecision before he rallied and said: