Chapter 16 #3
“The constables had no idea, and we could give them no clues,” replied Mr Grey unhappily.
“None of the silver candlesticks or other valuables were missing. Their only suggestion was that the register was taken by drunken youths for a dare. In that case, I hoped their consciences would eventually move them to return it. Sadly, it has been missing for half a year now.”
“They took only one book, from all those in the chest?” Darcy queried with a frown, gesturing to the remaining piles of books inside the huge wood and iron chest in the vestry. “Doesn’t that suggest a more targeted theft?”
“I suppose if someone wished to conceal a wedding, that could make sense,” the clergyman speculated with an unconvinced shrug, unconscious of Darcy’s motives and seemingly too innocent and unsuspecting to question the master of Pemberley very deeply.
“But the years covered by this book were almost three decades ago. I can’t think who would come looking for it now. ”
“Quite,” remarked Darcy shortly, biting back both his disappointment at the register’s absence and his angry suspicion that his unknown enemy had been there before him. “Was the lock on the chest forced?”
Father William shook his head, rather shamefaced.
“It wasn’t locked, I’m sorry to admit, Mr Darcy. Old Mr Edwards likes to go in and browse the parish births, marriages, and funeral records. His fingers are too arthritic to work the key now, and he gets very upset if he thinks we have locked him out.”
“Mr Edwards? He was the vicar at St. Martin’s before you?”
“Yes, for more than forty years, if you remember. He has no family, and you kindly keep him in the vicarage household, Mr Darcy.”
Forty years…Mr Edwards had therefore presumably conducted the wedding of Darcy’s parents. Might he even remember it?
“I wonder if I might talk to Mr Edwards this week,” Darcy suggested. “He must have known my parents well.”
“I’m sure he would be honoured if you came for tea at the vicarage one afternoon, Mr Darcy,” Mr Grey suggested. “As would I. You should know, though, that he is almost ninety and his memory has failed. He might not know you or recall your parents.”
Darcy almost groaned – another victim of old age and deteriorating memory.
He would bring Georgiana and Mrs Annesley for tea with him at the vicarage one afternoon.
It would make the conversation more natural and cover his own disappointment if Mr Edwards were as little compos mentis as seemed likely.
After making this proposal with lukewarm enthusiasm, Darcy took his leave of Mr Grey and remounted his horse.
∞∞∞
On the ride back to Pemberley, Darcy cursed his frustration aloud across the fields. It vexed him greatly that every unobtrusive means of verifying the date of his parents’ wedding seemed to lead straight into a brick wall.
Was Darcy to be reduced to returning to Rosings and asking Lady Catherine to recount her – no doubt excellent – memories of his parents’ wedding day? Might she even have kept a diary back then? She certainly kept one now, and no new acquaintance, social call or event escaped it.
If his aunt did hold a record, would it have any weight as evidence to somehow to clear his name? Could he even persuade her to let him use such a personal document? For the good of the family, perhaps.
There would certainly be a cost to such favours, Darcy knew.
The least of it would be another long visit to Rosings and close attendance on Lady Catherine.
What else might she expect from him? His spirit rebelled at the thought of being so bent to her will.
This indignity could wait for now. There must be a few more avenues to explore first.
Rather than burning itself out on the ride home, his anger seemed to burn stronger as his conviction grew that someone had deliberately taken the trouble to remove all accessible records of his parents’ marriage.
By instinct, he still wanted to blame George Wickham. Frankly, he wanted to take a horsewhip to the man.
That rogue would have had ample opportunity to steal his father’s letters years ago, before the final rupture with Darcy, and when he still had a free run of the house.
He was also scheming and dishonourable enough to have taken the marriage certificate from the cabinet of family documents in the study, and even the registry from the church.
Still, there were some fundamental problems with this theory and questions that Darcy could not answer.
The registry was stolen only six months ago, for example, while Wickham had not been in Derbyshire, to the best of Darcy’s knowledge, and certainly should not have had access to Pemberley.
Well, there were fast horses, short visits and unscrupulous servants, much as he hated to think ill of any Pemberley staff.
The nature of Wickham’s fickle, weak, and impulsive character also undermined Darcy’s suspicions.
Wickham could not hope to lay his hands on a penny of Georgiana’s fortune, whether he married her or not.
As Darcy had made clear in putting an end to the elopement plot, her fortune was entirely tied up in a trust, with disbursement of interest in the hands of her guardians until the age of five-and-twenty.
Having seen the legal documents with his own eyes, Wickham knew this and could not be under any illusions about having quick or easy access to money by marrying Georgiana, whether or not she was shown to be the true heir to Pemberley.
There were other less legally protected heiresses in England, a fact of which Wickham’s recent adventures with Miss King showed him to be very much aware.
The effort of such a complex scheme to capture Georgiana, as well as its low chance of success, did not match a man as lazy and fuelled by animal appetites and immediate gratification as George Wickham.
Intellectually, Darcy knew the case against Wickham did not add up, yet his resentment against the man was so great that it was hard nonetheless to stop instinctively trying to fit him into the role of villain. But where else could he look to find his hidden tormentor?
Stymied and angry with his own failures too, Darcy urged his horse to a gallop.
∞∞∞
It was a week before Darcy got around to his intended visit to Matlock Castle.
Without great hope of success, he had continued slow, careful, and unobtrusive searches at Pemberley, including library shelves and attic cabinets.
There had also been his promised call at the vicarage, together with the ladies of the Pemberley household, a meeting that told him as little as the younger clergyman had warned.
On the approach to his uncle’s estate, Darcy regarded the unkempt grounds gloomily.
Like their owner, they had apparently gone to seed.
Had Matlock Castle lost its entire gardening staff?
Ludlow had apparently not noticed, or not cared enough to do anything about this untidiness.
He supposed his cousin had never been the practical type.
He ought not to judge his cousin too harshly, perhaps.
The earl had managed everything himself for many years, and it was easy for things like this to get out of control.
“I rang three times at the door,” Darcy observed crossly to the maid who finally admitted him to the house and took his coat after what felt like ten minutes on the doorstep.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the red-faced and busy-looking young woman excused herself. “We don’t get many visitors at Matlock Castle these day and the staff isn’t what it once was. There are only eight of us left, and Mr Arthurs is always with Lord Matlock now.”
Eight servants? For a house the size of Matlock Castle? It did not seem feasible.
“Where is Lord Matlock? Or Lord Hexham?” Darcy asked.
“You’ll find Lord Matlock out in the kitchen garden with Mr Arthurs,” the maid informed him, already rushing away back towards her job in the kitchens. “Lord Hexham is likely in his rooms.”
It was quite extraordinary, Darcy thought, as he found himself left alone there in the hallway. Still, he knew the house well enough from his visits here with Richard over the years, and made his way towards the rear gardens without escort.
“Uncle Thomas!” Darcy called out to the white-haired figure shuffling among the herbs.
The old man’s rheumy eyes looked at him in puzzlement. It was a tired-looking but capable man with grey hair and a worn black uniform who greeted him.
“Mr Darcy, what a pleasant surprise. Lord Matlock, your nephew has come to see you.”
“Eh?” said the old man, leaning towards his attendant and cupping his ear. “What’s that, Arthurs?”
“Your nephew Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, is here,” said Arthurs in a slightly louder voice. “Shall I order tea, Lord Matlock?”
“Darcy? No, no, that’s not Mr Darcy, Arthurs. This is quite a younger man than my brother-in-law.”
“You think of my father perhaps, Uncle Thomas,” Darcy stepped in. “You think of Mr George Darcy. I am his son, Fitzwilliam.”
“Fitzwilliam is my family name,” mused the old man. “A long line of Fitzwilliams have held Matlock Castle, you know. In the fifteenth century, the third Earl of Matlock built the tower you see just there…”
As Lord Matlock rambled at length about the accomplishments of this ancestor, Mr Arthurs looked apologetically to Darcy. Darcy remembered him as having once been valet to Lord Matlock. He was evidently now something closer to a keeper.
“Is he always like this?” Darcy asked quietly, under his breath, and Arthurs nodded.
“His Lordship has suffered with age for some years, but his mental state has worsened this past half-year,” the man told him equally softly. “Lord Hexham does his best to manage the estate, but…”
They were interrupted as the earl took off his hat and cast it into a pile of brambles to illustrate some point in his speech, laughing as though at the greatest joke. Arthurs went to retrieve it and restore it to its owner’s head.