Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
E lizabeth was surprised to see an anxious chambermaid open the door of the Matlocks’ Mayfair town house to them.
“Mr Darcy and Miss Bennet to see Colonel Fitzwilliam,” Darcy told the girl. She curtseyed, then walked into the vestibule, down the corridor, and stopped in front of a heavy oaken door, evidently not understanding the need for her to take away their outdoor accoutrement. She gave a meek knock and waited for her master to bid her enter. There was a shuffling sound from behind the door, then a throat cleared.
“Come,” someone called, and Darcy turned the knob to do so.
Darcy motioned for Elizabeth to enter before him, then followed closely behind her. The dimly lit room was clearly a study, but the sheer volume of books lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves made it feel more like a library. Tall, thick curtains shut out much of the afternoon light. Colonel Fitzwilliam sat before the lone candelabra in a large leather chair, his arms lying upon an imposing desk. A neat stack of papers lay beside his fists. His jaw was clenched, and he was staring at the gleaming surface of the wood.
When neither she nor Darcy spoke, the colonel lifted his eyes to them. “Miss Bennet,” he cried, sitting up ramrod straight in his chair before taking his cousin in with wide eyes. “Darcy!”
Elizabeth supposed she understood the shock he must have been feeling. They had arrived unannounced, after all. And after almost six weeks with no word, it seemed his cousin had no thought to seeing Darcy in his study, ‘whole and hale’ as Sarah had called him.
Recovering from his shock, Colonel Fitzwilliam finally stood from his seat and came around the desk, clasped Darcy on the shoulder, and offered a hearty shake of the hand. “Where have you been, old man? I was worried sick for you.” He sounded sincere, but his eyes shifted about in a way Elizabeth could not but find unsettling.
“Holed up in Clerkenwell of all places,” Darcy answered, giving his cousin a rather contracted account of his last several weeks’ experiences. The colonel listened with wide eyes, never letting go of Darcy’s shoulder.
“You would like to see Georgiana, no doubt,” he said, putting his hand out as if to usher them out of the study.
“That can wait. I must speak to you on another matter,” Darcy answered sombrely before adding with a quizzical brow, “Where is Bunn?”
“We have had to let several servants go, Darcy,” he answered in a hesitant tone, returning to his seat and flipping his thumb meaningfully through the stack of papers he had been perusing. “All is not well at Matlock House, let us say.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Darcy said thoughtfully. Elizabeth was mortified for him; it seemed the poor colonel had the weight of everyone’s worries on his shoulders—Darcy’s disappearance, Lady Catherine’s demands, Miss de Bourgh mad behaviour, and now his family’s dwindling finances. No wonder his countenance was so pallid.
Silence hung in the room for several moments. She glanced at her betrothed, whom she knew was not eager to tell the sordid tale which they had come to reveal. Elizabeth, sensing Darcy’s hesitation, asked, “Has your journey been successful, Colonel?” She could have kicked herself; had he not just admitted his family’s pecuniary distress?
His initial confusion gave way to understanding as he answered, “Oh, that. No, no.” Elizabeth thought she saw beads of sweat appearing at the man’s temples; was it warm in the room? “I have seen the lady, but, well, I had come with the purpose of enquiring about my portion from my mother’s wedding contracts. I desired to know whether it was enough to live upon, to marry.” He heaved a long sigh. “But the lady...things have not turned out as I had planned.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” she said with sympathy. While she experienced some meagre relief to know that she herself was not his bright star, his news gave her sincere distress. With his household in dire financial straits, no wonder he looked so hopeless—of course there was nothing awaiting him in the coffers.
“Yes, well, that is how things go sometimes, is it not?” The colonel’s tone of resigned cheerfulness was clearly forced. “Come, let us go see Georgiana,” Fitzwilliam repeated, turning to Darcy and rising again.
“While I do long to see her, it is more important right now that we speak to you.”
Why was he so eager to lead them to Darcy’s sister? Did he just wish to be rid of them? What was he about?
“I suppose that is just as well. She may be out at the moment. You know how my mother likes to parade her about town. Much to Mrs… ahem …much to Mrs Younge’s chagrin.”
Why did he hesitate before saying that lady’s name?
“I am afraid we come with some rather unhappy news,” Darcy finally spoke, and his cousin sat once again.
“Do you?” he asked after a hard swallow.
“We have just come from Kent.” Darcy began in halting tones. “I am sorry to tell you that Anne has committed an atrocious crime, for which she has been arrested and immured at Bedlam Hospital.”
“Bedlam? Anne?” He let out a huff of disbelief; slumped in his chair, he scrubbed his hands over his face. “You do not mean… She actually…she killed…”
“Mr Collins, I am sorry to say.”
“Mr Collins ?” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eyes shot to Darcy, and he shook his head with several rapid blinks.
“Indeed, but that is not all,” Darcy said, his brow furrowing at his cousin’s reaction, “though I begin to suspect you know more of the story than I heretofore believed.”
“I…do. That is, I have, in the past, heard Anne refer to…to Lady Anne. But, Darcy, I always thought she was prevaricating. Or at least exaggerating. It is true, then?”
Elizabeth turned her eyes towards her betrothed, concern welling up in her. Darcy’s expression was a mixture of pain and disbelief as he stared towards the tall velvet curtains at the far end of the study.
“I knew, as a little girl, she had been obsessed with rather morbid things, but I did not know she had it in her to commit such a heinous deed as murder. But, even in her ailing state, she would hint that she had…had…”
“Hurt my mother,” Darcy croaked, finally willing to meet his cousin’s eye.
“I am sorry. I truly am.” His words seemed a mixture of sincere concern and rushed response. As he spoke, he lifted a long, slim leather-clad box from a drawer before him and set it in his lap. Fitzwilliam slowly, silently undid the clasp, threw his gaze about the room, and began to fumble with whatever was inside. “If I had known she was truly a danger to others, that she had been responsible for Lady Anne’s death, I would have told you. I would have told the magistrates, anyone who would listen! But I honestly thought it was just the ramblings of a sick girl. I assumed Lady Anne had run off with that carpenter; we all did.”
“Yes. When all this time she had been the victim of a depraved murderess. Anne’s doctor called her ‘a highly motivated, cold-blooded killer.’”
“One must needs go that the devil drives,” the colonel mumbled, his eyes moving from Darcy to the box in his lap. “But there was no evidence of foul play if I remember correctly.”
Elizabeth meditated on this thought. If there was no evidence of a murder, then Miss de Bourgh must have hidden Lady Anne’s body exceedingly well. Even if the girl was tall for her age, the weight of such a burden would surely be too much for her to heft through the halls of Pemberley. No, she would have had to drag the body to its final resting place, and even that would probably have been too much for a twelve-year-old female.
Moreover, if Anne’s weapon of choice had been a knife, as it had been at the parsonage, there would have been blood. There had certainly been much to scrub after Mr Collins’s demise. Could she have, by herself, taken Lady Anne’s life and dragged her body to a place so well concealed that it was still hidden after sixteen long years? Would she have had the strength, the intelligence, or the know-how to clean blood from floors, or perhaps walls and furniture? Would she even know where to find water and rags for such a task? No. Elizabeth did not believe she would.
“She must have had an accomplice,” she said breathlessly as the realisation dawned on her. She must have had help—the help of someone much stronger and more resourceful. Elizabeth watched as Colonel Fitzwilliam darted his eyes from Darcy to herself. He was nervous, but why?
His earlier words finally registered. ‘One must needs go that the devil drives.’ It was All’s Well That Ends Well , the same play, she now realised, he had quoted from at Rosings. That was the Shakespeare play Anne de Bourgh had quoted to her mother during their argument, its title the very words she had said to Darcy when they left her at Bedlam. Miss de Bourgh and the colonel had always been so close. And, if she was not mistaken, the colonel would have been fifteen or more at the time of Lady Anne’s death. Could he even now be the enemy from whom her beloved had been hiding all these weeks? What kind of danger were they in?
Before Colonel Fitzwilliam could answer, a rustling sounded near the windows, and shouting flooded in from outside the study. Colonel Fitzwilliam slid the box he had been holding onto the surface of the desk. Before Elizabeth or Darcy could react to the noises, the door flung wide and two irate people burst into the room.
Darcy had been anxiously awaiting Fitzwilliam’s response to Elizabeth’s question when a large man and a petite woman roared into the small study. They were in the midst of a heated argument, it seemed, for they did not note his presence as they bickered back-and-forth. He manoeuvred Elizabeth bodily behind him, hidden from sight for all but her skirts.
Darcy immediately recognised Mrs Younge, who was pointing an angry finger into the chest of the giant man entering in her wake.
“I told you—you should have done Darcy in yourself! This great oaf doesn’t have the goods in the brain box to do it on his own!” she screeched out of the side of her mouth, her countenance a study in agitation as she glowered at the ogre before her.
“It’s a two-man job, I tell you!” cried the man Darcy now recognised to be Nigel, one of the thugs who had been after him. “With Horace out of the picture, I’ve had to track him alone, and that’s not my speciality. Besides, Horace said he was gonna do the dirty work, and all I had to do was hold him down. Now that I’m expected to off him proper, and all by myself, I expect to be paid for the both of us!”
“Paid for what? For not killing Darcy?” she scoffed. “For not even being able to get yourself into the same county as him for more than ten minutes at a time?”
Darcy started at Mrs Younge’s words.
“If it’s so easy, then why don’t you do it?” Nigel retorted.
“Believe me, if I had the freedom of a man, I would have had the deed done months ago,” Mrs Younge claimed, still shouting. Neither of them had taken their eyes off the other’s scowling face.
It took a moment for Darcy to digest that they were speaking of him—of his murder.
His mind raced. Mrs Younge had been the one to hire the assassins to hunt him down. But, to what end? What could his sister’s companion possibly gain from his death? Did this have something to do with Georgiana? It must! If he were out of the way, Georgiana would inherit Pemberley and every farthing of the Darcy fortune. But, how would having him killed affect Mrs Younge’s situation? What did she imagine she stood to gain from Georgiana’s windfall? And why was she bringing her complaints into Fitzwilliam’s study?
Unless…
Darcy had made Fitzwilliam heir to his fortune should anything happen to both him and Georgiana. And had not his cousin’s expression become wistful when he mentioned his sister’s companion in their conversation just a moment before? Could Fitzwilliam and Mrs Younge be working together to eliminate both himself and his beloved sister?
There was no room for the agony of betrayal in Darcy’s heart, only the panic of rage that his dear one might be in danger.
“Where is Georgiana?” Darcy bellowed over the din of the argument, now desperate to see her, to know she was safe.
The pair before him was silenced, both of them wide-eyed with mouths agape.
“Mr Darcy!” Mrs Younge finally shrieked in horror. “Fitzwilliam, what is the meaning of this?”
Darcy wished to know the same thing. Turning to his cousin, he found the colonel standing resolutely behind the heavy desk, his expression cold and his hand reaching for one of a pair of black flintlock pistols lying in the open box before him.