Lady Catherine's Necklace

by Joan Aiken

  ‘But how can they be paid, if no particular sum is stated? Or place of payment?’

  ‘The letter intimates that another communication will follow later.’

  ‘I believe,’ put in Mr Delaval, ‘that in such cases of kidnapping this is a customary procedure, so as to heighten alarm and despondence, you know, in the unfortunate relatives of the kidnapped person.’

  Lord Luke and Colonel FitzWilliam glanced at him sharply, manifesting disapproval at his claiming such familiarity with the niceties of kidnapping procedure.

  ‘May I see the letter?’ said Anne, stretching out her hand to Lord Luke, who held a grimy and much-folded piece of paper.

  He appeared hesitant. ‘I am not sure if it will be proper – some of the expressions employed are very coarse.’

  ‘Oh, good gracious!’ Anne said irritably. ‘She is my mother.’

  But as Lord Luke, capitulating, was about to pass over the paper, Pronkum, with a loud scream, snatched it and flung it into the fire.

  ‘That is the only place for such a wicked message!’ she cried, and, casting herself full-length on the floor, drummed with her feet and sobbed at the top of her voice.

  ‘Oh, fetch a couple of footmen, Frinton, and take her upstairs,’ said Lord Luke in disgust. ‘Let us have a little peace around here.’

  ‘But what can be done about my mother?’

  ‘Why – nothing, now. Not,’ said Lord Luke scrupulously, ‘that we could have taken any practical measures, even had we retained that paper.’

  ‘We could have shown it to the constables,’ pointed out Colonel FitzWilliam.

  Lord Luke’s expression showed how little help he felt this measure would have provided. Mrs Jenkinson – since Anne declined any restoratives, smelling salts, or condolences – hastened away to help the housekeeper pacify Pronkum, whose shrieks could still be heard ringing through the house.

  ‘Poor Miss Anne!’ said Priscilla Delaval. ‘This must come as a severe shock to you.’

  ‘Well,’ Anne said dispassionately, ‘it is not often that one receives such a piece of news, I suppose.’

  She glanced into a box of faded, dusty books that stood on a side-table, and, selecting the one she was seeking, took it out and left the room.

  But when she returned to the potting shed, Joss was no longer there.

  Smirke was there instead, busy stirring an evil-smelling mixture of rainwater and hop manure.

  ‘I was obliged to send the lad off to Marsden for a cartload of potash, Miss Anne,’ he said smoothly. ‘Young Joss can’t always be at your beck and call, you know. Or I should be obliged to tell his lordship how much time you spend with him.’

  ‘I doubt if his lordship would care,’ Anne said coldly. But she gave Smirke a guinea and carried the book, Talking About Trees, back to her own bedroom.

  Inside the cover was an inscription in faded brown ink:

  A Mon Chéri

  from

  His Fair Star

  and under the inscription were four lines of verse in the same hand:

  O eat your cherries, Mary

  O eat your cherries now

  O eat your cherries, Mary

  That grow upon the bough.

  Lady Catherine was relieved to find what she took to be a tinderbox in a small canvas bag on the shelf with the tallow candles. It was a kind of pistol mechanism in which, by turning a wheel, a flint was made to strike a steel plate. Unfortunately it took her a great many efforts before she managed to make it strike a spark, and then her lack of dexterity was a shocking hindrance, for even when she achieved a spark, she could by no means persuade it to ignite the strips of charred linen and rope ends dipped in pitch, which were presumably intended to be used as kindling material. She tried and tried, and could have wept with frustration, remembering the high-piled fires and the closed Rumbury stoves which burned day and night at Rosings. Did the kitchen fire ever go out? If it did, Lady Catherine knew nothing of the process by which some kitchenmaid or scullion persuaded it to blaze up again.

  At last, more by luck than skill, she did succeed in producing a tiny, flickering flame. No paper was to be seen, but she remembered that in her muff she had retained a scrap left over from the letter home she had despatched from the inn at Truro. Delving into the pocket of the muff, she was relieved to find that it was tolerably dry inside, and that the paper was still there and still combustible.

  With trembling hands she enclosed the little flame in a framework of twigs and shavings scraped from among the logs, and felt a surpassing sense of triumph when she succeeded in creating a small but healthy blaze, which she carefully augmented with all the driest bits of wood that she could find in the heap. The warmth was most gratifying, and so was the light.

  Lady Catherine had no idea what time of day it was, for she wore no watch, and the travel clock had been left behind in the carriage.

  So far, so good. The fire was a comfort, but she was, by this time, so hungry that she felt weak and sick. She ate an apple. It was sour, but quenched her thirst and helped allay the worst pangs of hunger. She eyed the flitch of bacon – but it was out of her reach. There was a three-legged stool, but Lady Catherine was not going to venture herself standing on that. She still suffered from intermittent spells of dizziness. If only the wretched man would wake up!

  ‘Sir! Sir! You!’ she addressed him urgently. ‘Rouse yourself!’

  But he snored on, and she was bound to admit to herself that his forehead and cheeks looked flushed and hot; his sleep was not natural slumber, but that of fever.

  And all that the miserable cabin contained was apples and an inaccessible side of bacon!

  There was, however, a cooking-pot, and there was a knife. And there was water. Grimly, Lady Catherine set to work, clumsily chopped up half a dozen apples, using the stool as a chopping-board, and set them to boil in the pot with some water. She hoped by this process to make a kind of apple porridge.

  The process took much longer than she had expected. She burned herself several times until she discovered how to wrap her hand in a layer of petticoat before touching the handle of the pot. Her petticoats, of which she had put on numerous layers for the journey, were otherwise a decidedly bulky inconvenience, since all her tasks had to be performed at ground level.

  When the apple sludge was prepared, she set the pot on the earth floor to cool and levered herself into the hammock again, for all these efforts had exhausted her. The fire would burn for an hour or two yet: she had built it up with several substantial logs. Perhaps some deliverer would presently arrive…

  She slept.

  * * *

  Mr Stillbrass, Lady Catherine’s attorney, was summoned from Tunbridge Wells and came in haste.

  When told that the ransom note had been burned, he looked exceedingly grave.

  ‘That was a most injudicious thing to do!’

  ‘It was an accident. Lady Catherine’s maid was distraught. But in any case, there was no signature, no means of identifying the writer.’

  ‘You did not recognize the handwriting?’

  ‘The note was printed – very clumsily printed,’ FitzWilliam recalled. ‘It seemed like the scrawl of a low-class, illiterate person.’

  ‘Oh, my poor dear sister!’ lamented Lord Luke. ‘I hope she is not fallen into the hands of some blackguards or ruffians who will villainously mistreat her!’

  Anne reflected that these were the kindest sentiments she had heard her uncle express towards her mother for some considerable time.

  ‘And you have not, since that one, received another note?’

  ‘No, we have not.’

  Lord Luke seemed rather puzzled and surprised at this. But he added, ‘Doubtless the villains wish, by prolonging and heightening our anxiety, to render us more amenable to some outrageous ransom demand. What kind of sum, Mr Stillbrass, do you think may be required of us?’

  ‘I suppose that must depend on the class of persons who have committed this felony. If they are, as you sa
y, low-class ruffians, their demands may not be so very exorbitant. A sum such as five hundred pounds may be the summit of their expectations.’

  ‘If they are better educated, you think they may expect more?’ FitzWilliam said ironically. ‘What can we afford to defray, out of my aunt’s estate? Yes, cousin Anne, you may well look grave – whatever the sum may be, it must all come out of your dowry!’

  ‘I assure you, cousin,’ Anne told him coldly. ‘that my thoughts ran in quite another direction.’

  She said to Mr Stillbrass, ‘Sir, since you are here, I think it must be proper to hand over to you this copy of my father’s will, which J— which was discovered up in the attics among some other papers of my father’s, during my Uncle Luke’s researches up there.’

  Mr Stillbrass was electrified.

  ‘A will? Another will of your father’s? God bless my soul! What next? What is its date? I must pursue it most carefully. If it should post-date the one that has been implemented – good heavens, good heavens!’

  She handed him the document, which, like all the papers, deeds and records fetched down from the attics, was in poor condition – yellowed, crumbling and dusty. Mr Stillbrass’s expression, when he studied it, was one of relief.

  ‘No, this is the same testament, of the same date, that I have in my office. The date, the bequests, are the same. Thank heaven!’ He turned the pages. ‘No, here is a codicil – this I do not have. It is handwritten in your father’s hand, unwitnessed, though, therefore invalid.’

  ‘What are its provisions?’ Colonel FitzWilliam asked with interest.

  ‘There is only one. “My cottage in Wales – Uthan, at Moel-y-Fiediog, to my eldest child.” Well, that is you, Miss Anne. You were Sir Lewis’s only child, therefore his eldest. You would have inherited the cottage, on your majority, without his troubling to add the codicil.’

  ‘I never knew that my father owned a cottage in Wales.’ Anne was quite startled. ‘I did not know that he had even been to Wales. My mother has never mentioned such a property.’

  ‘It was a whim – he purchased it quite late in his life. I do not believe that he visited it above two or three times. A smallholder’s dwelling, you know, with two or three acres of grazing, no more. I hardly think it would suit your tastes, Miss Anne!’

  ‘Who is in it now?’

  ‘Nobody. It was let to an old shepherd but he, I think, died some years ago. Nobody else has come forward as a prospective tenant. It stands too remote.’

  ‘When we are married,’ FitzWilliam said in a kindly tone to Anne, ‘we will make a journey into Wales to look at the property, and decide what is to be done with it.’

  Anne gave him a cold glance.

  ‘I am obliged to you, cousin. But meanwhile, what is to be done about my mother? Could we not advertise in the press?’

  Mr Stillbrass looked at her with surprise and some respect.

  ‘You have a head on your shoulders, Miss Anne! But do we really wish her predicament to be made public?’

  Lord Luke and Colonel FitzWilliam were both firmly against this suggestion.

  Lord Luke said: ‘No, no, that would be to bring down a dozen impostors and charlatans on our heads, all threatening – or promising – to produce her in return for outrageous sums of ransom. No, our only recourse is to keep silent, let no one know that there is anything amiss and wait until we receive a second message.’

  ‘I believe you are in the right of it, Lord Luke,’ Mr Stillbrass acknowledged, though he seemed a trifle scandalized at the matter-of-fact way in which Lord Luke laid plans to deal with his sister’s abduction.

  Colonel FitzWilliam said: ‘My Aunt Adelaide in Great Morran was, so far as we know, expecting her sister-in-law for a visit. Presently she will be writing to ask why Aunt Catherine has not arrived. What should we do then?’

  ‘I will advise you when that happens. I shall be in constant touch, never fear,’ said Mr Stillbrass, and took his leave.

  ‘Prosy old ass!’ said Lord Luke. ‘Anne, my dear, will you send for Joss? I may as well continue with my researches. And my old trouble forbids my passing any more time in those villainously dusty attics.’

  Letter from Miss Maria Lucas to Mrs Jennings

  My dear madam,

  Mr Collins is at last come back into Kent, but my sister Charlotte has begged me to remain here at Hunsford parsonage for some weeks yet, as Lady Catherine is gone off to visit her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Anglesea, and, lacking her rule up at Rosings House, Mrs Jenkinson and the housekeeper come at all times asking Charlotte’s advice, so she is glad to have help with the children.

  Mr Collins has let Longbourn Manor to a Captain Price, and seems very well satisfied with his tenant, who will be at sea most of the time, but who is an active, capable and sensible young man. Mr C. is somewhat dismayed to find Lady Catherine gone from home, as he has a great regard for her and hardly knows how to go on when she is not at hand to give him his instruction. (By the bye, it seems there is some mystery about Lady C.’s whereabouts. We at the parsonage are not supposed to know about this, it is kept a secret up at Rosings, but the news leaked out through Smirke the head gardener whose mother, Mrs Smirke, lives in Hunsford village and comes up to do the heavy laundry at the parsonage. Smirke, says Mrs S., received a letter which he was to hand to Lord Luke; this letter did not come through the post but passed from hand to hand. What the contents were we do not know, but we surmise that it related in some way to Lady C.’s whereabouts, for Col. FitzWilliam’s valet, a very well-set-up young man who is a nephew of my sister’s housekeeper Mrs Denny, avers that a letter came to his master from the latter’s aunt, the Duchess of Anglesea, inquiring why Lady C. had not yet arrived to visit her as expected. She, the duchess, is much distressed at this, for she lies sick abed and nigh to her end, so was wishful for her sister’s company. All this is a great enigma, which has us quite in a puzzle.)

  Meanwhile, affairs in this neighbourhood go on much as before. Poor Mr Mynges the painter is still in his cottage, Wormwood End, for since Lady Catherine’s departure his notice to quit has been withdrawn. Charlotte and I go to visit him and take him small comforts. He is a very gentle, sincere man; not, I think, such a gifted painter as was his friend Mr Finglow, but who am I to pronounce? Strangely enough, one of his most frequent visitors, often to be found there when we call, is Mr Ralph Delaval, who was, in a way, the author of his misfortune, for it was Mr Delaval’s imprudent and inconsiderate suggestion of pulling down the cottage to improve the view that led to the older man’s illness and death. I believe Mr Delaval feels this a great deal, for he is very different in his manner from when he first came to Rosings; he is downcast and sober and does not rattle on as he was used to do. I think he would be glad to leave the neighbourhood, but seems incapable of making the decision to do so. The prime cause of the Delavals’ lengthy visit – Miss Priscilla’s ankle – must, by now, have been used up, though she still makes a great palaver about the pain the ankle gives her, and requires to be wheeled about in a basket-chair.

  Charlotte says, and I do not entirely disagree, that Miss P. is setting her cap at Col. FitzWilliam, and that if he could get Miss Anne to cry off, she would have him before the cat could lick its ear. If that is so, I think the worse of the colonel – yet how can I judge? Miss Delaval has known him for some time. She told me she met him first in Derbyshire at the house of a Mr Bingley, where her brother was giving advice to Mr B. about improving his grounds. Miss P. gave me to understand that she quite lost her heart to the colonel on that occasion; and so persuaded her brother to travel into Kent at a time when she knew the colonel would be here, in hopes of meeting him again. Some parts of this tale are plainly true; yet it seems the Delavals must have contrived their accident so as to be invited within the gates of Rosings. I hardly know what to think … But I cannot like the air of artifice and machination that hangs over the business. Can there be any connection with the apparent disappearance of Lady Catherine? Surely not! There must be s
ome quite different explanation for that. Her absence from home seems to leave the Delavals in a most equivocal situation, for no one at Rosings welcomes them, yet none can give them notice to go.

  Meanwhile, I play my piano diligently and am practising some Beethoven sonatas which I hope to perform to you, dear Mrs Jennings, when I return through London. Mr Delaval was so kind as to procure them for me when he rode into Tunbridge Wells last week. He often comes and listens to me when I play the organ in Hunsford church (Mr Moss, the regular organist, is laid up with gout). Mr D. has said some very civil things about my playing, and he is a well-informed and clever man, so I value his praise (yet I cannot really like him).

  Charlotte is of the opinion that, if Mr Delaval should make me an offer, I should accept him. She says that my chance of happiness would be as great as most people can expect on entering the state of matrimony. But what can she know about it? She is married to Mr Collins, who is tolerably good-natured, to be sure, but so prosy and self-satisfied that it is a penance to be together with him in a room for above five minutes. If Charlotte had not her children, her household and village affairs, her poultry and the advantage of interesting company at Rosings House, I do not know how she would tolerate her existence. Compared to Mr C., it is true, Mr D. is a positive paragon. And Charlotte insists that I should do my best possible to secure him. But, dear Mrs Jennings, I do not love him, and my heart instructs me that marriage without love is a sin against the Holy Ghost. Must I, then, remain unwed all my life? I wonder if I could ever support myself by my music? Charlotte says such an idea is quite ineligible, and yet – and yet!

  Your affectionate friend,

  Maria Lucas

  PS Oh, dear Mrs Jennings, how I wish that you were here to give me your cordial, fair-minded, unprejudiced advice!