Jane and the Man of the Cloth

by Stephanie Barron

  “Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried, aghast.

  He found my eyes with an expression at once so ashamed and outraged it stopt all speech.

  “Whatever has happened?” I enquired of the aloof fellow by the carriage. His eyes swept my figure with grudging interest, but he hesitated with his answer.

  “I am Miss Jane Austen, a friend to Mr. Sidmouth’s cousin, Mademoiselle LeFevre.”

  The gendeman’s eyes shifted from my face to something at my back, and I turned to find Seraphine there, her expression one of horror as she gazed upon Sidmouth.

  “Geoffrey!” she cried. “Qu’est-ce que cest tout cela?”

  At her appearance, the gentleman stepped forward and bowed. “Mademoiselle LeFevre, I presume”

  Seraphine directed at his person the wildest of glances, and sprang towards Sidmouth’s side, until prevented from reaching him by his captors’ diligence.

  “Some intelligence, for the love of God,” I said, in exasperation.

  “Mr. Dobbin at your service, madam.”The gentleman removed his hat with a sweeping gesture. “I am appointed justice in Lyme, and am presently at High Down in that capacity.”

  “What business can you possibly have with my cousin?” Seraphine interjected angrily.

  “Mr. Sidmouth has been seized on suspicion of the murder of Captain Percival Fielding, and will be held in the Lyme gaol until the inquest Friday next.”

  There was a gasp of horror from Mademoiselle LeFevre, and a swift glance of agonised sensibility for Sidmouth; it seemed almost to me as though she recognised, in one look, that he might have killed for her sake; and felt all the horror of her regret and culpability. That Mr. Dobbin might read an equally telling truth in her countenance, I greatly feared. Her cousin, however, maintained a superior gravity that betrayed nothing—neither sensibility of Seraphine’s doubt, nor confirmation of his guilt.

  “And on what basis do you thus seize him?” I enquired of Mr. Dobbin boldly. My familiarity with the unjust imperilment of friends—so lately undergone at Scargrave Manor—gave me the courage to probe the law.

  The justice’s face closed. “I suggest you attend the inquest, madam, for the better satisfaction of your curiosity. And now I must beg leave to depart. The law may not be tarried, nor impeded in its course.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” I muttered under my breath, and looked to Seraphine. Her every attention was claimed by her cousin, however, as he was hustled into the carriage in the company of two fellows, while the remainder stepped up behind. One look only I had from the master of High Down, as his head was forced below the carriage’s sill; an intensity of purpose was in it, that spoke volumes without a word. I was to care for Seraphine as best I might, in Sidmouth’s absence; and I felt the charge as surely as though it were his last.

  I moved to take her arm, as the coachman clucked to his team; and found her stiff with horror and helplessness.

  “Take heart, my dear,” I said, with the falsest of hope. “Your cousin is not without friends. The first of these is Mr. Crawford. And though Justice Dobbin might pay little heed to the entreaties of a few women, he cannot ignore those of the first gentleman in town. To Crawford we shall go, therefore, as soon as ever we may.”

  19 September 1804, coat.

  ∼

  “I AM AFRAID, MISS AUSTEN, THAT THINGS LOOK VERY BAD INDEED for Mr. Sidmouth.” Mr. Crawford turned from his decanter of claret with a sober look. “You are certain you will take nothing? Such an excellent wine as this cannot but be restorative. Even my sister acknowledges its healthful properties. And you have already endured much that is distressing—”

  “Thank you, but no. I am already overly-fatigued, and fear it should unnerve me completely. You know, then, the nature of the evidence that would indict Mr. Sidmouth?”

  Crawford bowed his head and hesitated an instant before answering. “I am ashamed to say that I do.”

  “Ashamed?” I gave a quick look to Seraphine, who sat white-faced upon the settee in the Crawford drawing-room. We were spared the thinly-veiled triumph of Miss Crawford, who had been on the point of paying a call at our arrival, and had tarried only long enough to express her sympathies to Mademoiselle LeFevre in as insufferable a manner as possible.

  ‘Ashamed, indeed—for it was through my intelligence that Mr. Sidmouth was arrested.”

  “What!” Seraphine started to her feet, her eyes glittering and her aspect enraged. She would have leapt to Crawford’s face, her fingers bent to claw at his eyes, had I not intervened; but though she struggled against me, her golden hair flying, her speech remained unfettered. “You, who arc his dearest friend, would betray him so utterly? You would repay every kindness he has shown—all the days of good fellowship—with such lies as this? What depth of malevolence could have so turned your affection from my cousin?”

  “No malevolence, my dear,” Mr. Crawford protested, his countenance flushing deeply. “Only the conviction of my duty as an Englishman. For duty alone—and my respect for all the law upholds—could have prevailed in any contest of loyalty for Sidmouth. Had he been accused by another, on spurious claims, I should have defended him stoudy to the last; but the evidence of my own eyes threw in question the nature of the unfortunate Captain’s end, and where my eyes bore witness, my tongue could not remain silent.”

  “Pray elucidate the matter, Mr. Crawford,” I said quietly, as 1 helped Seraphine to regain her seat. The fight had drained from her slender form, leaving her beset with despair and trembling.

  Crawford threw back the contents of his glass and sighed deeply, pausing to collect his thoughts; I knew then what his actions had cost him.

  YOU will remember, Miss Austen, during the course of Saturday evening last, when you and Mademoiselle LeFevre honoured us with your presence at dinner, that Mr. Sidmouth engaged in a lively debate with the Honourable Mathew Barnewall.”

  I looked all my bewilderment, and saw it mirrored in Seraphine. “But of course, Mr. Crawford. Mr. Barnewall wished to purchase Sidmouth’s horse/’

  “The very Satan. So he did. Barnewall went so far as to jest that he should be reduced to robbing the Grange’s stables, did Sidmouth persist in opposing him.”

  “And Sidmouth rejoined that it should avail him nothing, for his horses’ shoes bore the mark of his initials.”

  “No, Miss Austen; I fear that it was /who voiced that opinion. You will remark that I knew full well how Sidmouth cared for his stables; and of how much value the horse Satan was to him. It was I who let slip the fact of the shoes being forged with a GS on their surfaces, and underlined that any who might steal one of the Grange’s animals should leave a trail for all to observe.”

  Comprehension began to dawn, and I closed my eyes with a sudden weariness—the exhaustion of my hopes, perhaps.

  “Of what importance is this in the present case, Mr. Crawford?” Seraphine enquired.

  “Could you imagine, Mademoiselle, the tempests of emotion—of agonised doubt—undergone in the privacy of my study, on the very heels of the Captain’s death, you should not look so harshly upon an old friend.” Mr. Crawford threw himself down into an easy chair, his short legs extended before him and his hands resting upon his considerable stomach. His bald head shone with the effort of his communication. Miss Crawford had said that her brother spent the day of Fielding’s discovery closeted in his study, with a bottle of claret for companionship; and I understood now the cause. Crawford had debated at some length before conveying his intelligence to Lyme’s justice, as evidenced by the two full days between the Captain’s death and Sidmouth’s apprehension.

  “I was the first man summoned to the scene by the boy who found Fielding’s body,” Mr. Crawford continued, “and for Sidmouth’s purposes, there could not have been a worse coincidence. For I could not help but observe the hoofprints all round the Captain’s still form, despite the trampling that his own horse had effected, in fleeing the very spot; and the fact of those initials—stamped deep in the mud at Fielding’s very head—
spoke more eloquently than even the blood upon the ground or the lily lying white upon his chest.”

  “Lily?” I cried, in sudden horror. The self-same flower had been found at the foot of Bill Tibbit’s scaffold, at the very end of the Cobb. I little doubted, from Mr. Crawford’s looks, that he was beset by similar fears. Had Sidmouth killed them both, and left the flowers as an inexplicable token?

  “This is absurd,” Seraphine spat out contemptuously. “Geoffrey is the very last man to kill another in so brutal a manner. You have been imposed upon, Mr. Crawford— and imperiled my cousin’s life as a consequence.”

  “My dear Mademoiselle,” Mr. Crawford said, with a pitying look, “who else but Sidmouth should have been riding such a horse?”

  “Anyone,” I broke in, “who hoped to incriminate him.”

  Crawford’s face evidenced his confusion. “In order to throw suspicion far from the murderer himself, you would say?”

  “Of course. Had you killed Captain Fielding, Mr. Crawford, should not you do the same?”

  The ghost of a smile o’erspread the gentleman’s features, and he nodded in acquiescence. “Perhaps, Miss Austen—though I should not place the blame upon my dearest friend.”

  “Assuredly not. You should choose your dearest enemy. And we may assume that Fielding’s murderer has done as much.” I rose to take a turn before the drawing-room fire, aware of the hope that dawned on Mademoiselle LeFevre’s features. “I am more than ever of this opinion, I declare—for had Sidmouth wished to murder Captain Fielding, he is quite unlikely to have ridden Satan to the scene, from suspicion that the horse’s hooves should be identified.”

  “But of course!” Seraphine cried, her countenance all animation.

  “You may well have the right of it, Miss Austen,” Mr. Crawford said, with a doubtful accent, “yet you do not account for the heat of passion. Your claims may only bear weight did the Captain’s murderer plan his crime beforehand. But did the Captain meet his end of a sudden—in the midst, for example, of a fight all unlooked for, between two men of hot temper—the matter of his mount’s shoes may have escaped the murderer’s attention altogether.”

  Seraphine was cast down again in a moment—from a sudden conviction, perhaps, that the case was quite likely as Crawford had supposed. Geoffrey Sidmouth, as my own mind imagined it, was very creditably thrown into the role of sudden assassin, when the spur of his temper was placed in consideration.

  “But would a man moved to such a sudden mortal blow carry a lily about his person, or leave it by the Captain in token of his sins?” I cried. “Depend upon it, Mr. Crawford. We are all grossly imposed upon. There is more to the matter than meets the eye.”

  “You may well be proved correct, Miss Austen,” Mr. Crawford replied, his dejected form speaking all his misgiving, “but the Captain is unlikely to have known two men who bore him such enmity, as we know Sidmouth to have felt.”

  I could not charge Mr. Crawford with the betrayal of his friend, as Seraphine had done; he spoke only as Mr. Dobbin and the coroner might, in presenting the evidence at Fielding’s inquest—and for any light to be thrown upon the matter, even the most distasteful of possibilities must be accorded a measure of thought. The darkest matters between the two men should be fully canvassed and understood, did we hope to find Fielding’s murderer.

  “Mademoiselle LeFevre,” I said tentatively, with a look for poor Seraphine, whose face was lost in her kerchief, “I have no wish to increase your distress, for the idle satisfaction of my own curiosity; but it would appear that a better understanding of the affairs between your cousin and Captain Fielding, might materially improve Mr. Sidmouth’s case. Is it in your power to reveal the cause of his profound dislike?”

  Her angelic head came up, and her eyes sought mine with pain. “I do not know—I am not certain what may safely be said. I must speak with Geoffrey first.”

  “It turns upon the Captain’s nickname, does it not?” Mr. Crawford gently enquired. “Le Chevalier. He won it through some service to yourself, I had understood.”

  “Service? Service? Is that what he called it?” Seraphine threw back her head with bitter laughter. “The English have a curious way with language, do they not? Mr. Crawford speaks of duty, when he should say betrayal, and Captain Fielding—Captain Fielding spoke when any man of honour should better have remained silent. From the services of our friends, my cousin and I have both of us been reduced to misery.” She rose in a single fluid movement, swung her red cloak about her form, and turned to Mr. Crawford a countenance as remote as heaven.

  “Thank you, Mr. Crawford, for the ndulgence of your time; but I fear I must return now to the Grange. There is much to be done, and one less pair of hands to do it; and I hold my cousin’s concerns too dear to neglect his business in his absence. You will forgive me.”

  Mr. Crawford cleared his throat, and sank his chin in his cravat, and seemed at a loss for words.

  “May I offer my company, Mademoiselle, and my assistance?” I enquired.

  Seraphine only shook her head. “You are kindness itself, Miss Austen, but I should like to be alone at present. We will speak again, I hope, in a few days’ time.”

  That she envisioned some meeting by the Golden Lion, in the midst of Sidmouth’s inquest, I little doubted; and felt a deep foreboding. A look for Mr. Crawford convinced me that the gentleman was similarly lost in thought; but he roused himself sufficiently to order his carriage, a measure of solicitude for which I was thankful, having walked my fill of Dorset’s hills for one morning.

  Our few moments’ journey was rendered tedious enough in being passed in virtual silence, before Seraphine was deposited on the Grange’s doorstep; and at the coachman’s turning his horses’ heads, I had a final glimpse of her—pale, upright, and clothed in fire, as she toiled her lonely way through the courtyard.

  20 September 1804

  in & wee hours

  ∼

  I COULD NOT SLEEP, TONIGHT, FOR TOSSING AND TURNING IN THE grip of tortured thoughts—all that I observed and witnessed today being fresh upon my mind. A thousand expressions and attitudes paraded before my wearied eyes— Mr. Sidmouth’s warmth, as he handed the boy Toby his crutches; the face of Seraphine, as she stared across the sunlit Channel towards France; her tears, in considering Captain Fielding’s mysterious behaviour towards herself; and her raging loss in the face of Sidmouth’s seizure. Mr. Crawford, too, would not be banished from my mind—for such a heavy burden did he bear, in debating, as he must, his friend’s guilt or innocence!

  The heaviest share in sleeplessness, however, I must accord to the proper place, as arising from my own indecision regarding Sidmouth. In truth, I knew not what to think of the incriminating hoofjprints. A plausible case might be made for another’s having taken a mount from the Grange’s stables, and done away with the Captain in SidmouuVs guise; but I felt all the truth of Mr. Crawford’s conjecture—that none might harbour towards the Captain such enmity as the master of High Down.

  —Or none, perhaps, than the smugglers and their lord, who undoubtedly bore towards the Captain a mortal grudge, for having bent his efforts to disturb their clandestine trade—but since all the world stood ready to proclaim Geoffrey Sidmouth the very Reverend, such an avenue led me nowhere.

  Or did it?

  I sat up in bed, transfixed by a thought.

  Captain Fielding had supposed that Seraphine served as the Reverend’s living signal, turning about the cliffs in her wide red cloak; he had offered it as his opinion that the very night that followed upon the heels of such a walk, should find the smugglers’ landing. I had strolled with Mademoiselle myself this morning, and observed her stand like a stone on die cliffs above the sea, for whole moments together. No ship had I observed, it was true; but I had been much preoccupied with my own interrogation, and its effect upon the lady.

  I threw back the bedclothes and reached for my boots.

  The conjectures of a fevered brain, made less reasonable by lack of sleep,
will bear all the weight of rational thought in the mind of the conjeeturer, however ridiculous their merits might seem by the light of day. Full many a midnight thought have I entertained with alacrity, only to reject it over my breakfast chocolate as excessively disordered. Tonight, however, I was possessed of too much impatience to await the dawn; I felt I must know whether Sidmouth was the Reverend or no, and I knew with all the certainty of midnight that the answer lay upon the shingle below High Down Grange. That most ladies of gende rearing and habits should rather die than venture alone through the darkness, I acknowledged; and set aside as irrelevant. I was not, after all, most ladies.

  A glance through the curtains, to observe the waning moon, a few hours from its setting—and the hope that any smuggling band worth its brandy should be likely to await a greater darkness for landing. 1 might just have time enough.

  And so, in the last extremity of caution, I clothed myself in my oldest dress—a serviceable brown wool, which should be some proof against the coolness of a September night, and the damaging effects of the downs—and let myself out of Wings cottage as quiedy as I knew how.

  THE WALK THAT WAS BRISKNESS ITSELF IN THE FULL LIGHT OF DAY, required nearty twice the time to effect in darkness and stealth; and the moon was fled from the sky indeed by the time I found the shore of Charmouth, and groped my way along its length. Mr. Crawford’s fossil works I passed, and felt gratitude for its familiar humping of tools and rock, all shrouded now in canvas; passed, too, the path from the road above, where Mr. Sidmouth had pulled up the Crawford barouche—a day that seemed so long ago, I might have lived it in another lifetime.

  I climbed up on a little bluff above the sand, to gaze at the rubble surrounding the fossil pits; and remembered the ammonite he had pressed into my hand—cool and smooth, like his strong fingers. Then I turned to the sea, and stared out over the endless black, as enormously empty as eternity itself. I had never before witnessed the curl of surf upon a beach at night, and was much struck by the white-green glow of the waters, as though some light from within the sea’s depths would guide the waves to shore. The fresh wind clutched at my brown wool, and sent a chill through my body—unless it be the sensibility of my exposure to the elements, and the solitude of the night, and the possibility of a fate such as the Captain had found, that made me quail where I stood. Such isolation, as wrapt me round in discomfort! Well might I curse the power of midnight thoughts, that had sent me on such a foolhardy errand!