Chapter Eight #2
And then there was a clattering across the room, and they both jerked their heads in the direction of the noise, but there was nothing.
Elizabeth scanned the far side of the room. “The secret passage…. Is the entrance to it somewhere over there?”
“Not to the one that leads to your room, that one is behind the tapestry.”
“There might be another.” Elizabeth lowered her weapon and crossed the room to inspect the shelves and wall for anything that could denote a second passageway. Mrs. Rushworth discovered it by pulling at a strange looking sconce, and a panel in the wall slid back a few inches.
The two women gasped, their quarrel put aside as together they pushed the panel aside. In the dark, narrow passageway, they could hear retreating footfalls. “They must have heard me,” Mrs. Rushworth said, her face pale and grim.
And then something caught Mrs. Rushworth’s eye, and she took a few steps into the passage, stopping to pick up a small silver object. It fit in the palm of her hand, which she extended to show Elizabeth. It was a vinaigrette de toilette shaped like an alder tree.
Mrs. Rushworth frowned at it. “Take it, for your evidence. I shall pray it belongs to a lady who will keep her mouth shut if she heard my story.”
Elizabeth nodded gratefully as she took the little object and tucked it into her pocket. “Thank you. But surely it is not necessarily a sign of guilt to be in the passageways.”
“No?”
“You tell me. You were in one just this morning.”
“A fair point, I suppose,” Mrs. Rushworth said wryly. “But I should like to know where this passage leads.”
Elizabeth trembled, clenched the penknife in front of her, and nodded.
Mrs. Rushworth lifted a candle off the nearest table, and the two women joined their free hands as they slowly stepped into the passageway.
Something skittered past Elizabeth, brushing her skirts, and she bit back a whimper, certain it was a rat.
They pressed on, and eventually rounded a corner.
A short distance later, they reached the end of the passage, which was closed.
Mrs. Rushworth raised the candle as she searched for some mechanism that would open it. “There must be something, else what good would such passages be?”
“There, at the top.” Elizabeth motioned for Mrs. Rushworth to shine the light a little higher, and a small latch was revealed where the stone was cut away. “Can you reach it?”
“No, but I might be able to lift you.” Mrs. Rushworth set down the candlestick and held out her arms. Elizabeth began to tuck the penknife back into her bodice, but Mrs. Rushworth caught her wrist. “Keep it. We do not know what we shall find on the other side.”
Elizabeth nodded and braced her free hand on Mrs. Rushworth’s shoulder as the haughty woman indecorously managed to lift her far enough off the ground for Elizabeth to reach the mechanism and open the passage door.
There was a creak as the wall shifted across the stone floor, and light poured in from the narrow crack.
The door itself was light and easily pushed aside once Mrs. Rushworth lowered Elizabeth to her feet, and they stepped into a bedchamber.
Holland sheets covered most of the furniture; it did not appear to belong to any of the current guests, and Elizabeth knew not whether to be disappointed or relieved. “Well, if the room is unassigned to any of us, I suppose anyone might have come in,” she said.
“Mr. Tilney assigned each group of searchers to some sort of the house.”
“True,” Elizabeth said.
“Hey ho! Is someone there?” Elizabeth recognized her uncle’s voice, and he came into the room with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Crawford in town “Lizzy?”
“We found a secret passageway,” Elizabeth said.
“We were alerted to it when we heard somebody else in here,” Mrs. Rushworth added. “Have you not seen anyone in the last few minutes?”
“We were searching the next room together,” Mr. Darcy said. “We have not left one another’s presence for a moment, nor have we seen anybody.”
“We heard you easily enough, so whoever it was must have been very stealthy,” Mr. Crawford mused.
“A lady,” Elizabeth suggested, sharing a glance with Mrs. Rushworth before taking the vinaigrette de toilette from her pocket and showing it to the gentlemen.
“Ah, a clue! Cathy will be delighted,” Sir Edward said, examining the object they had found.
“We wondered whether it was damning merely to be in the passageways,” Mrs. Rushworth said. “But if this was left by someone who was not assigned to search this area, that must add a degree of ill-intent.”
“That is a very good point,” Mr. Darcy agreed. “And nobody was to be alone. Someone in the passages must have separated from their search partner.”
“Or they both went through together,” Elizabeth said, not able to make sense of it. “We should check, anyhow, if everyone remained together, or if by the end of the day anybody has been unaccounted for.”
“I agree, but for now we had better get on in looking for the key. I trust you are recovered, Maria – Mrs. Rushworth?”
“I am, Mr. Crawford,”
“If you gentlemen would give us a moment,” Elizabeth said.
The three men went into the hall, but Elizabeth detained Mrs. Rushworth.
Despite their disagreement, Elizabeth felt that after exploring the passage together, she had some little duty to Mrs. Rushworth.
“I would not have mentioned anything, had you not spoken to me. Unless it becomes necessary, I will not speak of it beyond those of my inner circle who are already aware.”
“That is a fair compromise,” Mrs. Rushworth said with a tight smile. “I will show you the very same courtesy, and I even wish you well.”
They were in accord, and they rejoined their escorts and went their separate ways. Elizabeth spent the next hour searching for the key that would unlock the drawbridge. Sir Edward asked what she had spoken of with Mrs. Rushworth, and Elizabeth candidly described her encounter with the woman.
At the end of it, Mr. Darcy laughed appreciatively. “You brandished a knife at her?”
Elizabeth grinned; she had tucked it away after encountering no enemies, but she withdrew it from her bodice once more, and his eyes widened. He turned away to peer out the window and, she suspected, conceal his laughter.
“Very well done, Lizzy!” Sir Edward cried. “Well, I suppose Cathy will be wanting to hear all about it. Shall we return to our deliberations in the parlor?”
They all agreed, and they sought out the others with whom they shared their investigation. Back in the parlor, Elizabeth again told of her conversation with Mrs. Rushworth, and there was some debate as to whether the person in the passage was their villain or not.
“My aunt found a passageway,” Emma reminded them. “And Mrs. Rushworth herself found another. Did not some of the gentlemen find another passage in the cellar?”
“But the material point is that only Mr. Darcy, Sir Edward, and Miss Bennet were meant to be in that part of the castle, searching for the key,” Mr. Tilney argued.
“Anybody else would have been straying from their assigned areas, and possibly even their search partner. For what other reason should they do so, if not something devious?”
This was agreed upon, though nobody quite knew what it meant. “The only women besides Mrs. Rushworth and those in this room are Miss Denham and Lady Susan,” Harriet said, fretting at Emma.
“And both are implicated in other murders," Mr. Darcy said gravely.
“Unless it is some lover’s token, carried by a man,” Cathy suggested with a gleeful expression. “Mr. Parker and Miss Denham are lovers, or Mr. Rushworth perhaps had something of his wife’s – and we know Mr. Willoughby and Sir Walter to have taken lovers.”
“So, it might really be anybody’s,” Mr. Darcy sighed.
Elizabeth caught herself reaching for him as an idea struck her. “I might discover who it belongs to. Perhaps they have not realized they dropped it in the passage. I could pretend to find it on the floor in the parlor and see if anyone admits that it belongs to them.”
“Brilliant,” he said with a nod, his hand clasping hers before he quickly withdrew.
Luckily, the rest of their companions were distracted by their own excitement at this development and did not see the momentary gesture that flustered Elizabeth – or at least, none but Cathy saw it. She winked boldly at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth felt her face grow warm; she could scarcely look at Mr. Darcy.
She had deliberately omitted one detail of her conversation with Mrs. Rushworth, that the lady had imagined an attachment between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
She had one pleasant conversation with the man and no longer wished to kick him out of a window, which certainly signified an improvement from a year ago, but to imagine them in love was madness!
***
The eight companions mulled over their various theories and speculations until it was time to dress for dinner.
They still believed Lady Susan and Miss Denham to be the likeliest suspects, but all agreed that Mrs. Rushworth had only managed to incriminate herself and her lover far more than the contents of their dossiers.
Thus when Elizabeth entered the drawing room with Sir Edward and her sisters, she went directly to Lady Susan and Miss Denham.
The two ladies had apparently grown thick as thieves since sharing a bedroom after the previous evening’s events.
They sat together on a sofa, barely moderating their voices as they mocked Sir Walter, who was beside himself trying to flirt with all the ladies at once.
He remarked that Elizabeth was in exceedingly fine looks, and said the same of her sisters and Emma, before finding a more willing audience in Mrs. Rushworth.
That lady seemed torn between her vanity and her wit, and settled for accepting his vapid compliments with forbearance.