Chapter 15
Fifteen
In Which Lizzie Finds a Clue and Loses Something Invaluable
Unfortunately for Lizzie, finding an approach to questioning Sally Burton would likely be easier than finding a time in which
to do it. Time before the ball was running out, and Jane was leaning on Lizzie to help her with all the added duties involved
with the preparations—the increase in correspondence, overseeing the airing out and cleaning of many rooms, designing the
menu and having to redesign it once more when the Meryton market could not supply all their desired food items on such short
notice, and endless lists.
So many lists.
In between the many preparations and Darcy’s assistance to Bingley, Lizzie, Darcy, and Charlotte spent as much time with the registers as possible.
They decided to divvy up the work: Darcy would take the oldest register, Lizzie the second oldest, and Charlotte would read the newest. Without something specific to look for, the work was slow going, but they managed to meet in the library two days before the ball, while Jane consulted with the housekeeper to go over the final details and Bingley caught up on correspondence with his overseas trade partners.
“Well,” Lizzie said, sitting down at a table next to Charlotte. “Have we found anything interesting?”
“If I have, I didn’t recognize it as significant,” Darcy said.
“I’ve uncovered many interesting things,” Charlotte said. “However, any relevance to the case at hand remains unclear.”
Lizzie tried to withhold a sigh. Research was an essential part of any solicitor’s career, of course. Reading her father’s
legal books was what had first piqued her interest in the law, after all. But as she grew older, she found herself more drawn
to people and cases than to theory and history—although Mr. Bennet had certainly made sure she had a strong foundation in
both. She knew that with a case as old as this, and with few witnesses, the historical record could prove invaluable. But
it was difficult to give these registers her total focus when Sally Burton was somewhere in this house, likely concealing
secrets, and she could just divulge them . . . if Lizzie could find a way to persuade her.
“Lizzie?” Darcy asked.
“Oh, it was the usual ebb and flow of baptisms and burials, livened up by a handful of marriages each year and the occasional
note about the weather or crop yield. There was a span of three pages devoted to every young man in the county who went to
fight in America and who did and didn’t come back, but all of them were accounted for.” Lizzie grimaced at the memory of all
the names listed as dead. “Eventually, anyway.”
“I read in mine that Dr. Fellowes used to pay regular visits to Honoria,” Charlotte said, holding up the register that covered the last thirty-five years.
“Really?” Lizzie asked. “What did they talk about?”
“Now, that he doesn’t say. See, he made record of the date and the people he visited. He visited her at least twice a month,
starting . . .” Charlotte flipped through the book, and Lizzie noted that she’d cut several lengths of string and used them
to mark her place. “Here. Twenty-three years ago this August.”
“Why?” Darcy asked. Then he looked at Lizzie. “He didn’t say anything about visiting her in your volume?”
“No. He received the living here about five years before Honoria married Geoffrey. He mentions her arrival to Netherfield,
and the first time she comes to church with the family—there’s a rather unkind remark about how worried he was that she’d
be Catholic on account of her ‘Spanish blood’ but she appears to be satisfactorily Anglican. And then that’s it, really, until . . .
well, the deaths. Everything we’ve heard about the so-called curse is corroborated in here.” Lizzie paged through the book,
having memorized the page numbers. “After that, Honoria is mentioned only very occasionally.”
“What about you, Darcy?” Charlotte asked.
“I’m afraid my volume is even drier than yours. The vicar before Fellowes was a man named Owens, and his records are perfectly
perfunctory, but hardly interesting. I think it likely that he predates our case.”
“So much for that,” Lizzie muttered.
“Come now, we’re not giving up.” Darcy closed his book and then reached for a quarto sheet, pen, and ink.
“Just because we didn’t stumble upon something obvious doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Perhaps we begin to make our own list of all the men who were born, say, at the beginning of your book, Lizzie, and then we make a list of all the burials, and cross-reference the two and track down whomever we can’t account for. ”
Lizzie felt her eyes widen. “Darcy, that could take . . . days. Weeks, even. We don’t have that kind of time!”
“Don’t we?” Charlotte asked, looking between the two of them. “I thought we were here until Jane and Bingley return to London
for the season?”
“Of course,” Lizzie said quickly, “but we can’t just let the mystery drag on forever! Jane’s reputation—”
“It is unfair how Jane has been treated,” Charlotte interrupted gently, “but that is not for you to fix. And we all hope that
the ball will help matters on that front. What’s the rush?”
The rush, of course, was Lady Catherine. As soon as this mystery was solved, Lizzie would go back to London. She hoped she
could do so after the ball, for she didn’t want to test Lady Catherine’s patience a third time.
Lizzie sighed. “Never mind, then. We make lists and cross-reference. But before we do that, is there anything else of interest
that either of you found?”
Darcy shook his head, and Charlotte looked mildly suspicious, but she did not press Lizzie. “I found record of Sally Burton’s baptism.” She turned to another string-marked page and turned the book around before sliding it over to Lizzie. Darcy leaned in as well.
Lizzie skimmed the page until she found the entry that Charlotte was tapping with her index finger. Sally Ann Burton, baptized this day, the twenty-second of March, it read.
“Interesting,” Lizzie said, unsure why this was noteworthy.
“Keep reading,” Charlotte instructed.
“Daughter of Amy Burton,” Darcy said. He frowned. “No father?”
“None mentioned,” Charlotte said.
Now that was . . . intriguing. “Did he die?” Lizzie asked. “But he must have, if Dr. Fellowes didn’t make any record of him
at the baptism.”
“There’s no record of burying any Burton,” Charlotte said. “I would have remembered the name.”
“No,” Lizzie said, feeling faint with excitement. “But I read about a Burton!”
She flipped through her own book, trying to remember where she had seen it—somewhere around the middle? She found the page
she was looking for. It was before all the awful records of the war in America, around the same time her father had been born,
but only a few years after the first mention of Honoria Bingley coming from across the sea as a new bride. There.
Amy Elizabeth Burton, born the second of September to Allan and Susannah Burton.
“I’m a fool,” Lizzie said, showing Charlotte and Darcy. “She’s a Burton not by her father’s line, but her mother’s. Of course she is! How could I have overlooked this?”
“Do you think this means her mother . . . never married?” Charlotte whispered the last part.
Darcy let out a low whistle. “That had to be quite the scandal.”
“You don’t recall anything about Amy ever marrying?” Lizzie asked Charlotte.
She shook her head. “No. And if Sally was christened Burton . . .”
“Foolish,” Lizzie repeated. “I’m not asking the right questions. I keep looking around and assuming things are as I see them,
and not thinking about what is missing.”
“Do you think our dead man could be . . .” Darcy almost looked afraid to say it.
“Well, that would certainly explain why Sally and her grandparents are so tight-lipped,” Charlotte said. “But it doesn’t explain
why he ended up in the flue in the first place.”
“I could think of more than a few reasons.” Lizzie didn’t voice them—she knew that Darcy and Charlotte, having worked in the
law, were all too aware of the various ways husbands or lovers could mistreat those they professed to love. Perhaps Sally’s
father ended up in the flue because he was a bad man.
“It’s as good a theory as any,” Darcy said. “But not one we can prove exactly.”
“What are you going to do next?” Charlotte asked Lizzie. “It’s not quite the irrefutable proof we were hoping for.”
“No, but it is something,” Lizzie said, thinking.
Sally Burton was all stoic expressions and withering looks.
Lizzie could not simply approach her and chip away at her reticence to reveal the truth with cleverly placed questions.
No, if Sally had been hiding something as big as a dead body for years, something that could potentially be the murder of her own father, then she would not fold quite so easily.
Just then, a gong sounded, interrupting her stream of thought. She sighed. “Let’s pick this up after tea—Charlotte, I think
we ought to go over the register again. Say, two years prior to Sally’s birth to the time that Amy passed away. Perhaps there
is something that didn’t seem significant the first time around that will stand out once more.”
They all agreed and headed for the dining room, where they were the last to arrive. Lizzie took a seat next to Kitty, right
across from Caroline, and Charlotte sat on her other side. Lydia was speaking as they arrived, so caught up in what she was
saying that she paid them no mind. “Mr. Chatsworth was really very charming. Wouldn’t you agree, Mama?”
“Very charming,” their mother said, nodding vigorously. “Courteous, and very handsome.”
“And he said he’d love to introduce us to his companions, a Mr. Dalton and a Mr. Hartman,” Lydia continued. “Jane, can you
please, please, please invite them to the ball?”
“We ought to be calling it a party, not a ball,” Caroline groused.
“Jane is opening the ballroom. Therefore, it is a ball!” Lydia protested.
“I don’t know, Lydia,” Jane said. “I’ve not met these gentlemen and—”