Chapter Eighteen
JANE WALKED WITH Cassandra on the morrow, and Cassandra thought they should walk into town.
Jane would have rather stayed close to their cottage, but she also felt foolish about making any protest. What was she to say?
Town reminds me of the mystery that I have not solved, and I don’t know if I wish to solve it on my own, and I hate myself for wishing he was around to help me solve it?
Jane had largely put all of it from her mind.
She had a great deal of practice at weathering disappointments.
Much of the time, life was neither easy nor gratifying.
The sooner one made peace with that, and she meant that—real peace with it, not some kind of grudging disappointment, wishing things would be better deep down—anyway, the sooner one made peace with that, the better it all went.
So, she and Cassandra walked to town.
And she wouldn’t have spoken to anyone, except that when she and Cassandra were taking a turn down the main street before they went back up to the path back home, Betsy the tavern wench came running out of the tavern.
“Oh, Miss Austen, I have been waiting for you to come back!” said Betsy. “I found something. I need to tell you of it.”
Jane and Cassandra had both stopped walking.
“Well, all right,” said Jane.
“Not here,” said Betsy, looking up and down the street. “Come with me into the alleyway where we’ll be concealed. I don’t want him to know that I found it.”
Jane had no notion what this woman was talking about, but she also found her curiosity was piqued.
They went with Betsy into the alleyway.
“All right,” said Betsy, “so, you must understand that I do not go about cleaning the other servants’ bedchambers, not regularly, anyway.
Obviously, everything needs to be cleaned at some point, but we let things go with our own chambers.
I must scrub the tavern floor every night, but I am not in there scrubbing the servants’ rooms so often. ”
“No, I suppose not,” said Jane, who wondered what this had to do with anything.
“It’s not that we like to live in filth or anything, it’s only that if you are quite tired, it doesn’t seem the thing to prioritize, and we are often very tired.
With the tavern, it’s not like being in a household, where there are set tasks every day.
Things can become quite haphazard and all manner of unexpected things can happen and one spends her whole day running here and there and back again, and the last thing I am going to do is go and clean servants’ quarters at the end of a day like that. ”
“Yes, yes,” said Cassandra. “We do understand.”
“And we don’t think badly of you,” said Jane. “Why did you need to tell me this?”
“Well, I know it’s been some time,” said Betsy, “and you might be wondering why I just found it. But the other thing you have to understand is that he is not pleased with anyone going in there, even to clean, so I always do his chambers last, and I will sometimes skip it entirely if there isn’t time. ”
“Whose?” said Jane.
“Mr. Hardy’s,” said Betsy. “He is the senior staff here, practically an owner, the way Miss Seward treated him, and he has his own chamber, all to himself, doesn’t have to share with anybody, and I haven’t been in there since before Miss Seward died, you know?”
“You found something in Mr. Hardy’s bedchamber,” said Jane.
“It was hidden-like,” said Betsy. “If it had been sitting out, I would have thought nothing of it. I don’t know why he didn’t just bring it down to the kitchens and have it washed, truly.
He shouldn’t have hidden it away in his folded clothes.
It was real deliberate, you know. He wanted to hide it. I know it.”
“What is it?”
“A drinking glass,” said Betsy. “It smells of laudanum.”
Jane let out a noisy breath. “Oh, dear.”
“Yes,” said Betsy. “Yes, I have been bursting to tell someone, and I’m afraid to tell.
I don’t know what to do. But I thought that since you and that Lord Byron were looking into things, you’d know what to do with that information.
Only…” She shook her head back and forth, quite quickly.
“I don’t want Mr. Hardy to hang. I know he must have done it to her, but I…
oh, I hate the idea that I…” She sucked in a breath through her nose. “But I had to tell. I had to.”
“Do you have the drinking glass?” said Jane.
“Well, no, I left it there,” said Betsy. “If I’d’ve taken it, he’d’ve known it was me. I’m the only one who goes in there. I couldn’t disturb it, could I?”
“I see,” said Jane. “Well, that’s good, then. If we can get Mr. Hardy to let us into his bedchamber, we can find it ourselves and then we—”
“No, there is no way to do that that doesn’t result in him figuring out it was me who told you!” Betsy exclaimed. “Why would you want to go in there? Why would you know just where to find it?”
“If Lord Byron were here, it might be easier,” said Jane. “It would be less irregular for him to go into another man’s bedchamber, and anyway, people don’t say no to him easily.”
“Where is his lordship?” said Betsy.
Jane shook her head. “Not important.”
“Oh,” said Betsy. “So, he jilted you.”
“He did not jilt me,” said Jane. “We are not involved in any such way. He is twelve years my junior, you know.”
“Is he, then?” Betsy smiled at her in a way that Jane did not like.
“Betsy, my sister would not be in some sort of untoward relationship with a man like that,” spoke up Cassandra.
“Oh, of course not. My apologies to you both,” said Betsy. “Anyway, that’s good, then, because he does seem like the type, after all.”
“What type?” said Cassandra.
“The type to jilt,” said Betsy.
“Oh, well, that is without question,” said Cassandra. “But also, he doesn’t seem the type to commit in any way. You would never be sure of a man like that.”
“Oh, indeed, I know the sort,” said Betsy.
“I don’t even know why we are talking about him,” said Jane. “We don’t need him. We can do this without him.”
“All right,” said Betsy, “but you can’t go in there. Can’t you simply use this information to pressure Mr. Hardy into confessing to everything?”
“Perhaps,” said Jane.
“No, you can’t!” Betsy clutched her forehead. “For if you tell him you know it’s in his bedchamber, it’s the same as if you go and seek it out. He will know I am the one who told you!”
“Well, if I cannot ever mention it to him,” said Jane, “then perhaps you should not have told me.”
Betsy let out a strangled sound. “Oh, you are right. Perhaps I should have kept it all to myself. Perhaps I should have simply let it go.”
“Look here,” said Cassandra, “after he’s been caught, he’ll be taken away, by the magistrate I should imagine. And so, it won’t matter if he knows, because he’ll be punished.”
“Who’s going to tell the magistrate?” said Jane.
“Well, perhaps we should,” said Cassandra. “Who is the magistrate of Hampshire?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “He probably lives in Winchester, do you not think, and—”
“We could send a letter,” said Cassandra.
“Oh, yes,” said Jane.
“Odd that you and Lord Byron have been running amok doing all this, and you haven’t given one thought to what might happen after you uncover the murderer,” said Cassandra.
“I suppose I rather thought…” Jane bit down on her lip. “Yes, I suppose I didn’t think about that at all. I was far too caught up in the other aspects of it.”
“Well, here’s what we’ll do. We shall find out who the magistrate is, send him a letter telling him that Mr. Hardy is a murderer, and he’ll dispatch someone to start an inquest or something, I should think.
Perhaps there will be a trial,” said Cassandra.
“We needn’t bother ourselves any more with it. ”
Jane furrowed her brow. “Well, I suppose not.”
“And you, Betsy,” said Cassandra, “he will not know that you have said anything until the magistrate sends someone to collect him. You will be quite safe.”
“It’s only that I don’t know that I believe that Mr. Hardy did it,” said Jane. “It doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have, because that would mean that he would no longer have the tavern, which was his livelihood and his home. Byron and I are both in agreement about this.”
“No, true,” said Betsy. “I can’t understand it myself. But he had that cup, and he must have done it.”
“And it still doesn’t explain the ladder,” said Jane, sighing.
“That ladder is curious,” said Betsy, shaking her head.
“This is simply the way of things,” said Cassandra. “Not everything has an explanation. Some things simply are never known.”
“I suppose,” said Jane quietly.
“I suppose,” said Betsy, tapping her lower lip.
“Come, Jane,” said Cassandra, “let us away. We shall walk back home and move on from all of this.”
Jane smiled at Betsy. “I do thank you for coming to me with this. You did the right thing, and we shall be sure that something is done about it.”
Betsy nodded. “All right, good.”
And then Jane allowed herself to be led back out of town and to walk with Cassandra on the road to their cottage.
Cassandra didn’t say anything for the first mile, simply kept glancing over at Jane and then sighing.
Jane knew her sister well enough to know that Cassandra was not going to keep her counsel forever, however. She waited.
Sure enough, eventually Cassandra spoke.
“I fear I have gone about this all wrong, and you are now only thinking of me as some kind of awful scold. I don’t mean to be that way, you know, Jane.
I am thinking about your happiness. I have your best interests at heart.
I don’t think anyone cares as much about you as I do. ”
“I know,” said Jane. “I well know that. You are…” She glanced sidelong at her sister, the person she had loved best for her whole life.
She was no longer Cassandra’s shadow, following the other woman around and imitating her, but she would say this was the closest relationship she had with anyone.
They were not only sisters, they were the best of friends, they were close confidantes, they shared each other’s triumphs and miseries, all of that. “I care about you too.”
“Oh, this isn’t about me,” said Cassandra. “This is about you, caught up in all of this, when you should be at home, minding your business and letting all of this take care of itself. None of this is our affair, Jane!”
“I know,” said Jane.
“I wonder if you have any care for our good name?”
“You know that I do.”
“It only seems you’re being very reckless. We went to visit a courtesan, Jane!”
Jane sighed. “You were quite scandalized by that.”
“We were sat down in her sitting room as though we were guests. If anyone knew—”
“No one does, and she isn’t a courtesan, anyway. She’s retired.”
“She traded,” said Cassandra. “Her favors for that house.”
Jane sighed. “Yes, what a thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a very nice house,” said Jane. “It’s larger than the house we live in, and there are three of us very respectable ladies.”
“Oh, I don’t believe you!” Cassandra pointed at her. “You are doing this to me on purpose, riling me in this way. I don’t want to sound like a scold, but you make it impossible to react with anything other than a scolding!”
Jane laughed softly. “I have given up on all of it now, have I not?”
Cassandra sniffed.
“What?”
“Well, where did you walk to the other day? You were gone ever so long.”
“I did go to look in on him,” said Jane.
“And he had been drinking for three days straight. He smelled like a distillery. He hadn’t been shaved.
It was appalling. You are correct, Cassandra.
He is not the sort of man I should be associating with in any way.
And the murder itself, and all the secrets, they are all tawdry.
I do see what you mean. I do. So, I don’t see why you’re scolding me. I am on your side.”
“Are you truly?”
“Yes,” said Jane. “I shan’t do anything else about it.”
Cassandra eyed her. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you should, because it’s the truth,” said Jane, sighing.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Cassandra asked Jane how she was coming along with the letter to the magistrate.
Jane was in the middle of working on First Impressions. “We don’t even know who the magistrate is.”
“I can easily find out. I’m sure Edward knows,” said Cassandra. “So, then, write something up and leave a space at the top to fill out his name.”
“I’m busy,” said Jane.
“It won’t take you long,” said Cassandra.
Jane sighed.
“All right, well, you don’t have to do it now,” said Cassandra, “but I think it must be you because I think you know the ins and outs of it the best of anyone. I shall leave you to your writing, though. Let me know when you have the letter.”
At luncheon that day, Jane waited for Cassandra to ask about the letter to the magistrate, but Cassandra never did.
So, eventually, Jane said, “I don’t think I want to write the letter to the magistrate.”
“Why not?” said Cassandra.
“I told you, I’m not sure Mr. Hardy did it. It doesn’t add up.”
Cassandra huffed.
“What if someone planted it there to make him look guilty, someone who knew Betsy would find it?” said Jane.
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Maybe Mr. Seward,” said Jane. “Maybe Mr. Eves. And I still haven’t talked to Mr. Welling about his ladder or anything else. He could have been Miss Seward’s lover.”
“Heavens!” objected Mrs. Austen. “Let us not use that word at the table.”
“Apologies,” said Jane.
“Yes, sorry, Mama,” said Cassandra.
There was a long pause.
“Well, then,” said Cassandra, “you will simply let him get away with it?”
“As you pointed out, Cassandra, this is none of our affair,” said Jane.
Cassandra pressed her lips together, thinking that over, but then she nodded. “All right. I suppose that is fair enough.”