Chapter 3 In Which Lizzie and Darcy Make a Wager
Three
In Which Lizzie and Darcy Make a Wager
Of all the foolish things Lizzie could imagine Darcy doing on this holiday, pulling a literal skeleton from the walls of Netherfield
Park was the least of them.
Most of the ladies became hysterical, of course. Caroline, Kitty, and Lydia wouldn’t stop screaming, and Mrs. Bennet had fallen
into a swoon—a genuine one, probably, considering that she’d landed on the floor and not daintily on the settee or in someone’s
arms. Jane was trying fruitlessly to get her sisters to calm down, and Charlotte looked as though she’d seen a ghost. Mary
sat in the corner, features drawn into a worried expression, and Mr. Bennet tossed his newspaper aside and came to stand next
to Bingley.
But Lizzie was scarcely paying attention to anyone else. She looked straight at Darcy, whose mouth had fallen open with shock,
and put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, this is a fine mess you’ve pulled down onto Jane’s new carpet.”
“I was trying to unblock the chimney!”
“And you’ve accomplished it,” she said. “Shall we add chimney sweep to your list of credentials?”
“Lizzie, be serious. There’s a dead body in the hearth.”
She almost wanted to laugh then, but then remembered that she was cross with him.
“Is it really a dead body, sir?”
Lizzie had quite forgotten the maid, who had gone to cower behind a chair when the body had come tumbling down. Now she stepped
forward timidly, scarcely able to look at the bundle.
Lizzie looked down at the skull, which she realized with fascinated horror still had a fair amount of dark hair attached to
it. “It would appear so.”
The maid began to tremble, and a strange hiccupping sob slipped out of her. “I can’t—I can’t be here!”
“I know it’s upsetting,” Lizzie said in her best soothing voice. “But—”
But . . . what? Lizzie hesitated on her next words. He’s long dead? You’re safe? Whoever killed him and stuffed him up the chimney is very unlikely to still be lurking around?
Lizzie didn’t know nearly enough about the situation to be reassuring. All she knew was there was a body. In Jane’s drawing room.
“Sarah, you’re in shock,” Jane said, stepping forward to place a hand on the maid’s shoulder. “We all are. This is a dreadful
thing, but I assure you, my sister is going to get to the bottom of this. Why don’t you sit down?”
But Sarah was shaking her head vehemently. “I can’t stay here. I always thought it was merely stories, but I can’t work in a cursed place!”
“Sarah, please,” Jane tried again, but the maid shoved Jane’s hand away and took off toward the door, throwing it open and
racing out into the hallway. “Oh, heavens—someone ought to go after her!”
“I agree,” Lizzie said. “I want to know what she meant by—”
Mr. Grigson burst into the room with an expression close to alarm. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, addressing Bingley,
“but I just saw Sarah leave the drawing room at a run, and she went straight out the front door. I can only imagine what might
have caused her to do such a thing, and I can assure you—”
He stopped when he saw what was lying in the hearth, and went white.
“Mr. Grigson, don’t you go running off, too,” Lizzie said.
“I-I-I . . . I see,” he said, although it was clear he did not. “Is that . . . ?”
“I’m afraid so,” Bingley said, and then he turned to Lizzie and Darcy. “Whom does one call in a situation such as this? It
seems as though it is much too late to call a doctor, but an undertaker does feel rather . . . preemptive, considering.”
Bingley didn’t say it, but Lizzie supposed he didn’t have to. Everyone knew there was no innocent reason for a body to be
stuffed up the chimney.
Lizzie looked at the body more closely and realized that what she was looking at was no mere skeleton with hair.
While the shape of many of the bones was clearly visible, something like thin, brown leather stretched over the remains.
Flesh, Lizzie realized. Or what was left of it.
That explained then why there was still dark hair clinging to the skull, patchy and not very long, covering most of the head except where . . .
“Well, that’s something,” she muttered.
“What?” Darcy asked, pressing close behind her.
“I’m hardly an expert in anatomy, but what does that look like to you?”
Now Mr. Bennet and Bingley had joined in peering over her shoulder. It was her father who voiced what Lizzie had noticed.
“Cracks.”
“More than cracks,” Darcy said. “The skull looks bashed in.”
Bingley made a strange gasping noise and Lizzie looked up in alarm. Was he going to retch?
Mr. Bennet pulled his son-in-law away from the body and thumped him on the back. “Well, that settles it, then. A constable.
Does this village happen to have one?”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Grigson said. “I’ll call for him right away.”
Lizzie’s eyes met Darcy’s, and for a moment she forgot about their animus. He had pulled a body from the flue, and its skull
was cracked in. It could only point to one thing.
Murder.
But Lizzie’s excitement was ruined by Caroline proclaiming, “I won’t stay here! Not if there are skeletons and goodness knows
what else!”
“Caroline,” Bingley said with a heavy sigh.
“No, Charles! I mean it!”
“All right,” Jane said, clapping her hands together sharply. “Now, we’ve all had quite a shock. I’ll ring for tea, and we’ll postpone dinner—”
Mrs. Bennet appeared to regain consciousness abruptly. “Jane, you can’t expect us to take tea in the same room where a dead
man lies!”
“Of course not, Mama—we can use the morning room for now. In fact, should we perhaps—”
“I have a question,” Lydia interrupted. She had managed to calm herself far more quickly than Caroline, and she was peering
toward the body with wide-eyed interest. “How do you know it’s a man, Mama?”
Lizzie looked to her youngest sister. It was a good question, and it was always disarming when Lydia spoke sense.
“Because only men get murdered,” Mrs. Bennet explained.
“Ah,” Lydia said, nodding.
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “That’s not true at all,” she quickly corrected. “In my experience, women are murdered just as often
as men. In fact, it’s rather disconcerting, when you consider the numbers—”
“Oh, stop it, all of you!” Caroline snapped. “I don’t want to spend another second more in this room, discussing murder! It’s
all you ever talk about!” She stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She could be heard muttering to herself
as she went down the hall.
“Oh dear,” Lizzie said. “I do believe we might have driven Caroline to the brink.”
Her words came out a bit less sympathetic than she meant them. “She’ll recover,” Jane said firmly. “We all will. Now, to the morning room. I’ll call for tea.”
She gave Lizzie a significant look as she corralled their younger sisters to help Mrs. Bennet to her feet and steered the
rest of the ladies out of the room.
“I don’t always talk about murder,” Lizzie muttered when her sisters and mother were gone.
“Yes, you do,” Darcy said.
“Even a little bit is more than your mother can manage,” Mr. Bennet said.
“Well then, isn’t it fortuitous for her that this body has clearly been dead for a good long while, and whoever is responsible
is likely long gone?”
She knew that her father, Charlotte, and Darcy recognized her sarcasm for what it was, but Bingley, bless him, did not. “Er . . .
no? Because wouldn’t that make the killer all the more difficult for you to find?”
Lizzie turned to him. “Me? Oh, no.”
Now Bingley looked truly confused, even more so than when the body had first appeared. “You aren’t going to investigate this
case?”
“That depends. I thought I wasn’t allowed to investigate dangerous cases anymore.” She looked at her father as she said this.
Mr. Bennet had the decency to look slightly abashed, but it gave Lizzie no satisfaction.
She couldn’t help but think of that fateful day when the last letter from Lady Catherine had arrived in the post. After she hadn’t shown up to Lady Catherine’s appointed meeting spot, Lizzie had known that the other lady wouldn’t simply move on.
And when she got the next letter, she wasn’t going to hand it off, no—surely there would be some sort of clue in the letters, something Lizzie could use.
So when the crisply folded note arrived, she’d actually been excited to break the seal right there in the front hall, pulse thundering in anticipation.
But it wasn’t long before her insides had turned to ice at the words written inside.
She’d taken the note to her father and Darcy directly, of course. She might have been eager to solve the case, but she wasn’t
foolhardy. And she’d watched their faces sour with fear as they read the note.
My dear Miss Bennet,
I really thought better of you. Do you recall the first time we spoke, formally, in my carriage? You told me that you wish
to be useful. I so admire usefulness in young ladies, especially ones such as yourself. You have talent and determination.
Which is why I am so very disappointed that you chose not to keep our meeting.
I grow weary of being coy. You have proven yourself a keen solicitor, and I have a need for legal services.
At one time I thought I might persuade you to see the wisdom of entering my employ, but your stubbornness has ensured that we must resort to unpleasantries.
Allow me to be forthright: If you do not take my case, I will find Mr. Darcy first. He works such long hours at Pemberley, and as of late chooses to walk home rather than ride in his fine carriage—your influence, I presume?
And if that does not convince you, then I’ll come for your father next.
Does he always walk home with his nose in a newspaper?
And lest you think I’ll stop there, there are your younger sisters to consider—Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. Four is an awful lot
of daughters to have still at home, I’m sure your mother would agree. How might she feel to have one or two fewer girls on