Chapter Three #2
This did not seem to convince Sir Walter, who grimaced as his nephew led him off in search of the captain.
Mr. Tilney declared he would saddle his horse at once.
“The nearest village is six miles from here, and I will be slow in the rain and the darkness. It may be hours, Darcy. Will you make sure everyone gets dinner, and keeps calm? You can coordinate things with Mrs. Clay if you do not wish to speak to Mrs. Younge.”
Mr. Darcy moved closer to Mr. Tilney, and Elizabeth found herself craning her neck as she strained to hear what he was saying. She recalled how he had glared at Mrs. Younge, and it gave her a horrible presentiment.
Cathy leaned in and squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “I have a terrible feeling about Lady Susan and that secret passage,” she whispered. “If it connects to the cellar… surely Lady Susan might have cleaned her hands before returning to us, for we dithered a few minutes before discovering what happened.”
“But why would she do such a thing?”
“She is a widow… perhaps that may have something to do with her secret.”
Elizabeth shook her head and kept her voice low.
“But Mr. Tilney promised to protect everybody’s secret.
He was a few days away from turning his father over to the prince.
Why should anybody silence him so permanently, and poor Mr. Wickham?
” Elizabeth felt her stomach twisting in knots at the thought of the handsome soldier who had flirted with her a year ago now lying dead in the cellar of a remote Welsh castle.
And what could he have to do with the general, who was by all accounts an awful man?
“Mr. Tilney said that one amongst us deserve to be given over to the magistrate. Anybody whose secret is that ghastly must have some reason to… to murder. And if he did not read all the information about us, perhaps there were other secrets just as bad.”
“We should consider that the general’s eldest son will now be inheriting property,” Elizabeth whispered.
As the ready of their party was given to the same nervous chatter amongst themselves, Mr. Tilney took his leave and hurried toward the stables.
Mr. Darcy led the rest of them to the parlor, while Cathy went to retrieve Lady Allen, Emma, and Harriet.
A quarter of an hour later, they all converged in the parlor, whispering hurriedly.
Though Mr. Darcy had been quite capable of commanding the situation before, at present he only sat on the sofa beside Elizabeth looking more severe than she had ever seen him, and she was too anxious over his deafening silence to pay much heed to the chatter of Cathy and Lady Allen.
Not long after they all assembled together, Mr. Tilney returned. Cathy looked up in alarm. “Something is wrong.”
He nodded sadly before letting out a shrill whistle to call everyone to attention. “I was not able to go and fetch the magistrate, for the drawbridge was raised, and cannot be lowered again.”
“What do you mean, it cannot be lowered again?” Sir Edward bristled at him.
“I mean that the chains that lower it have been locked in place. I have attempted to wrest them free and move the mechanism, but unless any of you are secretly a blacksmith, I am quite stuck here. We all are.”
A momentary hush fell over the room, and then Lady Susan said, “So, we are all trapped here.”
“Yes, with a murderer in our midst,” said Captain Tilney as he sauntered into the room.
He turned and locked the door behind him.
“Nobody is leaving Clwyd Castle until I know who killed my father. I do not believe for a moment that it was George Wickham, for why should such a wastrel bite the hand that feeds him?”
Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath and grimaced at the man, though in the dim, flickering candlelight she doubted that he could see her contempt.
“You did this,” Mr. Darcy said. “You locked us in.”
“Yes, I have placed a lock on the chains that will prevent the drawbridge from opening, and I have hidden the key away for safekeeping, so the guilty party need not think of escaping.”
Emma scoffed at the captain. “You are the general’s heir. How do we know that you have not killed him yourself, and this is some display to demonstrate your innocence? Perhaps you mean to blame someone else.”
Captain Tilney took an imposing step toward her, and Emma staggered backward into Harriet. “Perhaps you can be cavalier in the face of your father’s demise, Miss Woodhouse, but I do not take this lightly.”
Emma glared at him. “How do you know who I am?”
“I know who all of you are, and I can guess why you are here,” the captain said, casting an accusatory look at Mr. Tilney.
“Now just a minute, Fred.”
“What have you told them, Henry? That you know all their secrets? Did you wish Father to cut you into the arrangements? Did he tell you to keep out of it?”
Mr. Tilney held up his hands, looking equally indignant and horrified. “I want nothing to do with Father’s treachery, nor should you. I gathered everybody together to help them be free of his extortion.”
“You did say that you wished to get rid of him last night at dinner,” Sir Walter Elliot observed.
Mr. Willoughby nodded. “Your brother at least seems distressed by your father’s passing. And he was with his valet. Can anybody vouch for your whereabouts at the time of the murder?”
“I told you I was writing to my sister,” Mr. Tilney said. “I can produce the half-completed letter, if you like.”
“You might have written it at any time, to give yourself an alibi,” Lady Susan said. Her eyes sparkled and she was nearly smiling, as if she was less concerned with Mr. Tilney’s guilt and more interested in merely needling him.
“But many of us were alone at that time,” Cathy cried. “You yourself disappeared down that secret passageway, and were coming from an entirely different part of the house when we saw you next.”
“But nowhere near the cellar,” Lady Susan said with a little sniff.
“We followed the passage from the cellar,” Mr. Willoughby said. “It let out near a stairwell, and at the top were the two empty rooms you spoke of, Tilney.”
“And what of this other secret passage?” Miss Denham took a step away from Lady Susan and eyed her warily.
“It came out in the library, not very far,” Lady Susan said with annoyance. “Anyway, who gives a fig about secret passages, unless there is one that can get us out of here?”
“Yes, and I daresay the man who has admitted to trapping us in this dreary old castle seems to be to the guiltiest amongst us,” Mrs. Rushworth said, folding her arms in front of her chest. Beside her, Mr. Rushworth nodded blankly.
“Shall I summon my valet, madam, and ask him to tell you in detail of the scolding he received for misplacing one of my trunks?” Captain Tilney smirked wickedly at her. “Or perhaps you shall tell us where you were when my father was shot?”
“With the other ladies, surely,” Mr. Rushworth muttered.
Mrs. Rushworth gave Elizabeth a pleading look before saying, “I stepped into the library for a moment to retrieve a book and happened to see Mr. Crawford there. After that, I joined the other ladies when they were following the sound of the commotion.”
Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably, as if to avoid Mrs. Rushworth’s gaze.
She had seen that lady with the little fellow who was not her husband, and they had seen her observing them.
They had not wanted to be seen any more than she wished to make such an uncomfortable discovery, for she was fairly sure that the room they emerged from was not the library.
Lady Susan laughed. “You forget that the secret passage I found came out in the library, and I will tell you candidly that the library was quite empty.”
“So you say,” Mr. Crawford hissed.
“Perhaps you came in after we had run out,” Mrs. Rushworth hedged.
“Oh dear, I think this is all too much,” Lady Allen sighed.
Mr. Willoughby moved closer, and patted her shoulder. “My aunt is right. All these wild accusations add up to absolutely nothing; we ought to think of getting out of here and fetching the magistrate.”
Cathy gasped. “Lady Allen is your aunt?”
“By marriage,” Lady Allen explained. “He is to inherit my late husband’s house in Devonshire.”
“Have no fear, Miss Morland; everything else will go to you,” Mr. Willoughby said with a sweeping bow.
Cathy gaped at her old friend. “What?”
“You are also the nephew of Sir Walter Elliot, are you not? Fascinating how everybody is connected in some shape or fashion,” Mr. Parker observed. “I wonder what you expected, Tilney, in gathering together so many people who all have something to hide.”
“I should think he means to get our father out of the way, and extort you himself,” Captain Tilney cried. “You are fools to trust him, with our father laying dead in the cellar. I will have the truth out of you, Henry.”
Mr. Tilney backed away from his brother, glancing to Mr. Darcy for aid.
Mr. Darcy furrowed his brow for a moment, as if searching for something to say in their host’s defense.
“Well, he has invited Prince Edward and Princess Elizabeth here; I hardly think he would commit a crime just days before their arrival.”
The captain lunged for his brother. “You did what?”
Mr. Darcy stepped in and pushed the captain roughly by the shoulders. “You are only damning yourself,” he muttered to the belligerent man.
“Oh dear, I hope this is not part of some plot against the monarchy,” Mr. Rushworth gasped.
“He explained his reasons for inviting us here last night, my dear,” his wife said with a look of annoyance.
“Upon my word! I hope we are all monarchists,” Sir Walter grumbled.
“If we are, we shall be sorely disappointed when they are unable to reach us because we are locked in here,” Lady Susan said to him.
Captain Tilney eyed his brother and Mr. Darcy with a look of loathing, and then turned to the others. “I want to know where all of you were – someone suggested it.”