Chapter 14 #2
Her sister-in-law waved that remark off. ‘Jane, that’s nonsense. No one would suspect someone like me of writing your books. You are far too clever for all of us.’
Dora had to agree. The writer of Sense and Sensibility was not to be underestimated again.
‘Miss Austen, I owe you an apology, not the other way round. I am the investigator and yet I did not pause to wonder even for one second about you. Now you have been attacked—’
‘Not I, but my private papers.’ Miss Austen saddened at the recollection. Though she was making light of it, she clearly did not like losing her letters.
‘That can feel like the same thing – a violation. It does, however, put to rest the question as to who was behind the attack on Dr Sandys and warns us to expect the same might come the way of all of us involved in this case. The evidence appears to be pointing to someone looking for the comte’s last report, or other information that he held and on which he based his work.
He knew something that still presents a danger to the attacker. ’
‘But the man who killed him is dead,’ protested Eliza. ‘Surely the danger has gone to the grave with him?’
‘He is, but he might not have acted alone. Today’s events bear this out.’
‘Someone put him up to it?’ asked Miss Austen. ‘And when Lorenzo did not deliver the report, they decided to go after us, thinking we had it?’
Alex spoke for the first time in the debate the women had been dominating. ‘Dora, this is all very well, but why would the servant kill himself in that case? Why not make a run for it, or carry on looking elsewhere?’
‘Indeed, you have a good point.’
‘I did notice something, if I might be so bold?’ said Miss Austen.
‘Be bold,’ said Dora, waving her to continue. She wanted to hear what the observant novelist might’ve noticed that she had missed.
‘Did Susannah Black ever tell us exactly who else was in the house? I can imagine how it would be possible for someone to slip past witnesses during the confusion of that fateful morning.’
‘You’re right. She told us she didn’t see Lorenzo shoot himself; she only cleared up the mess. No one saw him commit suicide, so what if it wasn’t suicide?’
Miss Austen nodded. ‘And there is something else that is bothering me. Susannah described Lorenzo as proud and forceful, not depressed and desperate. Why go back upstairs after achieving his aim of killing his employers?’
‘I can think of two reasons. One: he knew there was a second loaded pistol there and was thinking there was no other way out. Two: to look for something else.’
‘The first is likely only if he was ready to commit self-slaughter and I don’t believe from Susannah’s description of his state of mind that he was,’ said the writer. ‘It sounds like he could easily have fled the scene.’
‘Which means he went back upstairs to continue his search.’ Dora felt like she and Miss Austen were thinking with one mind, completing each other’s thoughts. ‘And he might not have been alone.’
‘Whoever was up there could well have taken that moment to shoot his accomplice and escape, leaving the blame all with Lorenzo.’
‘And yet the comte outwitted them both. He has hidden what they were searching for – or sent it away. And where do you send something you want to keep safe?’
‘To the bank,’ said the writer. Both Miss Austen and Dora turned to look at Henry. ‘No wonder they are suspicious of our involvement in this. Henry, you must make sure your office in town is guarded and your partners know of the danger.’
‘Henry is at risk?’ squeaked Eliza, rushing to her husband’s side. ‘Darling, you must take precautions.’
‘Indeed, he must,’ said Miss Austen. ‘I assume they have a list of people who might conceivably have the papers they are after. I am hardly the top of that, but they saw the opportunity while we were at dinner to break in, my room being the least defended and I had been with Miss Fitz-Pennington all day.’
‘Writing everything down,’ said Dora. ‘If they were watching, they would assume you were something in the way of a secretary, recording what we saw. Your notebook?’
‘I keep that with me at all times.’ She patted her pocket then frowned. ‘When was Dr Sandys attacked?’
‘Around six o’clock,’ said Alex.
‘Then we have more than one person involved, because that was about the time my room was searched. I’d got back from my day with Miss Fitz-Pennington, changed for dinner and went down at around five-thirty.’
‘They took letters, you say?’ asked Dora.
‘They were on the desk and in the drawer, not hidden. They cleared those out. They tossed a few clothes and books around but were disturbed by a maid coming to turn down the bed.’
‘Did she see them?’
‘Only the back of a man in dark clothing going out the window. I’m on the second floor but he used the drainpipe to climb in and out. I’d foolishly left the window open and lingered in the window before dinner, thinking.’ She shrugged. ‘Country habits.’
‘You aren’t foolish, Miss Austen. You weren’t to know.
It sounds to me like they were instructed to take all writing matter without staying to read it.
That raises the possibility whoever is behind this has hired others to help them.
’ Dora turned to address their chief client.
‘Mr Austen, I believe word must be sent to your bank’s premises immediately, if it’s not already too late.
The thieves will realise we are aware of their interest, and they only have a brief window of opportunity before we double our defences. ’
‘I’ll see it done.’ Henry rang the bell to summon a footman.
While the message was composed and dispatched, Dora went up to Miss Austen’s room to see the damage.
As the lady had said, no major harm had been inflicted; it was a focused search by a professional.
Miss Austen didn’t have much in the way of fencible valuables but even the turquoise bead bracelet on the dressing table had been left unmolested.
A normal thief would’ve pocketed that. Returning to the drawing room, Dora went to the window and watched a postboy collect the letter and sprint off down the street.
Dora realised that she was lucky not to have been targeted.
Perhaps this was because she had given them no opportunity, having got out of the hackney cab in front of the office and having taken another here.
Running across town to go to Jacob had been unpredictable and they would have struggled to intercept her.
Miss Austen came to stand beside her. How Dora’s opinion of the lady had undergone a revolution in the last hour! The annoying shadow now felt like someone of substance.
‘You realise that none of us are safe until we solve this case,’ Dora said softly. ‘We wouldn’t want the author of Sense and Sensibility to come to grief by being foolish and insisting she involve herself in the investigation.’
Miss Austen smiled, her hazel eyes full of mirth. ‘You really liked my novel?’
‘I fell in love with Elinor – she is who I want to be when I grow up.’
‘Don’t we all,’ said Miss Austen wryly.
‘I wanted to shake Marianne while also feeling her passion and pain, and I thought John Dashwood a ridiculous cipher to his poisonous wife. Why didn’t you punish Willoughby more?’
‘Oh, Miss Fitz-Pennington, I expected better of you.’ Miss Austen folded her arms and gave her a schoolmistress look. ‘In life, do you see cads getting their comeuppance or do you see them sail on, causing yet more wrecks?’
‘They sail on.’
‘And the women who fall for them, do they pay ten times over or get away scot-free?’
‘They pay.’ Miss Austen was right: the Willoughbys of the world never got punished, whereas their victims ended up on the town.
‘But he did pay, in a way,’ Miss Austen added in a thoughtful tone. ‘He had believed himself a man of sensibility, but he chose callousness and avarice. His true punishment was seeing Marianne married and in love. Think what he would see in the mirror each morning, if he dared look.’
‘You talk as if he existed.’
‘He does – and he doesn’t. To me my characters are real – I see glimpses of them in portraits and people. I imagine what happens to them after the close of the novel. And we all know Willoughbys and Mariannes, Elinors and John Dashwoods.’
‘Indeed, we do. You have an astute grasp of people. I must ask you, what kind of character do you think our attacker is?’
‘Miss Fitz-Pennington, you flatter me. How would I know? My world is a village. I have no expertise in international affairs, or in places where matters are settled with assassination. Drama in what I write comes from cross words or lost reputations.’
‘They can be deadly too. And what are villages but a microcosm of all that lies outside them?’
‘True.’ She thought for a moment, teeth worrying her bottom lip. ‘Then I would say it is likely that the comte might’ve known his killer. To be allowed upstairs suggests someone with access to the family rooms, a confidante.’
‘A lover?’
She nodded slowly. ‘No one mentioned a woman upstairs at the time but shooting someone can be done by either sex.’
‘Indeed, it takes no strength to pull a trigger, but you do have to have some skill not to miss.’
‘And the art of allurement to get so close that it seems like suicide.’
She made a very good point. Dora could see a female springing that surprise on Lorenzo.
He would surely have pushed a man away. Unless Lorenzo had a male lover?
Perhaps it was best not to mention that to Miss Austen.
Dora’s world of the theatre was more liberal in that regard than the villages of England.
‘Miss Austen—’
‘Please, call me Jane.’ She touched Dora’s wrist, a clear gesture of offered friendship. ‘“Miss Austen” makes me think of my sister. Do you have a sister?’
‘No.’
‘A brother?’ Jane looked fondly over at Henry. ‘I have six.’
‘Only one, and he died a few months ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘He was murdered.’
The lady’s eyes filled with tears of compassion. ‘Oh, my dear! I cannot imagine anything worse.’
‘Some things are best not imagined.’
‘How true.’
Dora examined the brilliant woman standing beside her. She too could read character: it was part of being an actress and investigator. ‘You aren’t going to keep out of this investigation, are you?’
‘I am not, Miss Fitz-Pennington.’
‘You will insist on coming with me tomorrow?’
‘I will.’
Dora sighed. ‘Call me Dora. If we are going to risk our lives together, we had better do so as comrades-in-arms, Jane. So tell me: can you fire a pistol?’