Chapter Twelve #2
“We’re trying to determine that, actually,” said Byron.
“Yes, and who are you?” said Mrs. Blethens. “Really, you shouldn’t just come marching up to my door without an introduction, but it’s all right, in the end, because no one would associate with me in good society, not anymore. I’m not what would be considered a respectable woman.”
“Oh,” said Jane quietly.
“Oh,” said Cassandra.
Mrs. Blethens laughed. “What was it that you thought of me when you came?”
“Mr. Hardy described you as a midwife,” said Byron.
Mrs. Blethens laughed. “Did he? How very odd.”
“You supplied wild carrot seed for Miss Seward?” said Jane.
Mrs. Blethens’s face registered a look of alarm. “Wild carrot seed for Miss Seward?” she said. “Certainly not.”
“You don’t need to worry about getting in any trouble with anyone at all,” said Byron. “We are only trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Miss Seward. We shan’t pursue any action about you, madam.”
“Action? What do you mean by that?” said Mrs. Blethens.
“Well, we are simply trying to discover the whereabouts of Mr. Hardy on the night Miss Seward died. He says he was here,” said Byron.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“Was Mr. Hardy here?” said Jane.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Blethens. “Yes, he came to see me.”
“He did?” Jane was honestly surprised. All signs seemed to have pointed to Mr. Hardy having lied about that.
“But I am not a midwife, and I do not supply seeds for women, and he was not here on some errand for his mistress,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“Ah,” said Byron. “I am beginning to see.”
Mrs. Blethens turned to him. “Are you?”
“Were you a courtesan, Mrs. Blethens?” said Byron.
“Nothing quite so French or fancy,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“The man who bought me this house died some years ago, and I keep to myself. Everyone in town knows about me, and I daresay I’m bordering on respectable these days.
When they sent you here, to me, was there a whiff of any impropriety to the way they spoke of me? ”
“There was not,” said Byron.
“You see?” said Mrs. Blethens.
“But Mr. Hardy is not the sort of man a woman like you would associate with,” said Byron.
“Is he not?” said Mrs. Blethens. “I feel a woman such as myself can associate with anyone she likes.”
“Why Mr. Hardy, though?” said Byron. “How did you even meet him?”
“Why anything?” said Mrs. Blethens, sighing. “The heart has its own strange desires, and they make no sense to the head, I think. I had been quite happy alone, I must say, and then James…” She shrugged.
“Yes, but where would you even have seen him?” said Byron.
“Why, at the tavern, of course,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“I didn’t go on my own, but went in the company of a friend.
He was an old companion of the man who bought this house for me.
I do not associate much with people from that part of my life, so it was all very strange that it came together the way it did, but I was pleased by the way it all turned out, I have to say.
For I got James out of it. Anyway, that man, do you need his name, because he might be cross if I give it out? ”
“I don’t know if I do or not,” said Byron. “Continue the explanation.”
“There’s little to explain. He and I went to the tavern, and there I met James.”
“Mr. Hardy,” said Jane.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Blethens. “He and I were drawn to each other instantly. It was like being struck by lightning, in a way. I saw him once, and then I could not look away. Truthfully, I can’t rightly explain it.”
“Really?” said Byron, shaking his head.
“Well, he’s not entirely unattractive, I suppose,” said Jane, tilting her head to one side and considering the figure that Mr. Hardy cut.
“Truly?” said Byron.
“Truly,” confirmed Mrs. Blethens. “We both tried to resist, but we could not. He sought me out. He came all the way here to find me, and then it became something we… well, he could not get away often, I suppose, but when he could, he did.”
“And so that’s what he was doing here with you the night that Miss Seward died,” said Jane.
“Why lie about that?” said Byron. “Why say he was doing an errand for his mistress, especially one that casts her in a bad light?”
“The relationship between James and Anne was… complicated,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“They were lovers,” said Cassandra.
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Blethens. “Though James would have wished it, I think. He was in love with her, ever so devoted, and had been since he was a boy. She, on the other hand, would simply toy with him, I think. There was an… incident. I hesitate to recount it.”
“Recount it,” said Byron.
“It is indelicate,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“We can handle it,” said Byron.
Mrs. Blethens shrugged at him. “Very well.” She cleared her throat.
“As I understand it, when they were both adolescents, Anne would do things to tease him. Now, I don’t know, maybe he was seeing teasing where there was none.
I often feel as if men become attracted to a woman and then they believe the woman is sending them messages even though the woman herself is actually entirely unaware the man himself is in love with her. ”
“Oh, yes, a number of poems seem to be predicated on this exact scenario,” said Jane.
Mrs. Blethens chuckled. “Too true, and young men, adolescent men, their love is intense, a whole thunderstorm of love, all at once, drenching everything, but one thing out of place, and they are as shifty as that same storm, and love ends just as quickly as it began. So, at any rate, I don’t know if she really teased him or not.
But it does seem to be the case that he followed her to a tryst with her lover and that she pushed him into a hiding place and that he watched the two of them together. ”
“Who was this lover of hers?”
“No idea,” said Mrs. Blethens. “But this setup then happened a number of times.”
“What setup?” said Byron. “You mean she hid him on purpose, Mr. Hardy, to watch her with another man?”
“It was a bit of a game between the two of them, as I understand it,” said Mrs. Blethens.
“Now, by this point, I don’t know what was going through Miss Seward’s head.
She was young, too. Perhaps she liked the heady nature of the idea of two men being attracted to her—one who she gave herself to and another who only watched.
Perhaps she liked knowing that she was taunting each of these men with what she gave them and what she withheld from them.
James didn’t get to touch her, and the other man didn’t know he was being observed.
Whatever the case, it was badly detrimental to poor James.
He had knowledge, you see, had seen and witnessed things, but he had never done any of them.
He was a confidante of a woman who shared intimacy with him, but who would not actually embrace or kiss him and who would not return his affection.
You can imagine how confusing that might have been. ”
“I can,” said Cassandra. “He must have hated her.”
“Oh, on the contrary. He loved her. And this was, of course, the major stumbling block in our relationship. He didn’t wish Miss Seward to know that he’d found someone.
He said that she would not be pleased, that she would be, in fact, jealous, that she demanded to be the first in his heart.
I objected to this. I asked if she had actually said this to him in as many words, or if he had just decided that was the way it was.
Men can be fanciful with women, and I thought that perhaps he had spun himself this fantasy.
It made him feel as if they had some kind of connection, when they, in fact, did not.
She was no longer allowing him to watch her trysts with men, after all, and she was no longer behaving that way with him.
They were business partners, nothing more. ”
“Well, nothing more in her mind,” said Jane quietly.
“Yes, that is what I thought,” said Mrs. Blethens. “I thought that he was still in love with her and that she had never been in love with him. I encouraged him to tell her about me. On this last meeting, he said that he would. But then, she turned up dead.”
Hmm. If this was true, then it meant Mr. Hardy only had more of a motivation to have murdered Anne.
“Anyway,” said Mrs. Blethens, “his lie about the carrot seed, I think it is more to do with how he felt about Miss Seward than anything else. He was in the habit of concealing our relationship from her, so he concealed it from you. But he also resented the fact he had to conceal it, so he told a lie that made Miss Seward look bad. He could not help himself.”
“Yes, but he didn’t need to lie to me,” said Byron. “He could have told me he had a woman in Farnham, and that he was with her all night, and it would have raised far less suspicion than whatever it was he did say.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Blethens. “That is odd.”
“You seemed alarmed when we brought up the wild carrot,” said Jane.
Mrs. Blethens sighed. “Well, I do have wild carrot. I keep some of the seeds for my own use. And I did notice, this morning, that my supplies seemed to be a bit low. I have noticed this before, and I thought one of my servants was pilfering it. Now, I wonder.”
“You wonder what?” said Jane.
“I know James loves me,” said Mrs. Blethens. “But I don’t know if he could ever let anyone eclipse his boyhood adoration for Anne Seward. Perhaps he was taking that from me for her. Perhaps he wasn’t lying to you.”
“Why would he do that?” said Cassandra.
“If she wanted wild carrot seed, he would have found a way to get it,” said Mrs. Blethens. “He would have done anything for her. Anything at all. He worshiped her.”