Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Wickham was still at the railing. He had observed the extinguished candles, the rush of cold air, and his smile had faltered.
Not because he could see Sir Roderick, but because the ballroom had gone suddenly cold, dark, and very wrong; even George Wickham, who had no gift, no sensitivity, no conscience, could feel it.
Sir Roderick reached the top of the stairs.
He crossed the gallery in two strides. He stood directly behind Wickham, and Wickham did not see him, but Wickham shivered, and his hand tightened on his glass.
“No,” Elizabeth said. She said it aloud. She did not care who heard. “No, stop, please...”
Darcy looked at her. “Elizabeth?”
Sir Roderick put out his hands and pushed.
It should not have been possible. Ghosts could not touch the living.
The rules were clear, had always been clear, and Elizabeth had understood them since childhood.
But Sir Roderick Darcy had been sleeping for longer than anyone could remember.
He had been reportedly been an exceptionally disagreeable man in life.
He had woken to find his descendant’s murderer standing in his ballroom drinking claret, and the rules, apparently, did not apply to him.
Wickham stumbled forward, his foot slipping on the top step which a ghostly maid had spent the whole day diligently polishing, and went over the railing.
He did not fall far. The musicians’ gallery was one storey above the ballroom floor, perhaps twelve feet, but the staircase below was narrow and steep, all dark wood and sharp edges.
Wickham hit the banister, twisted, fell the rest of the way.
His glass shattered. The sound it made was slight, compared to the sound his body made when it hit the ballroom floor, head-first.
Someone screamed. Then someone else. Then the whole room was noise: shouting, chairs scraping, the crowd surging toward and away from the crumpled figure at the foot of the musicians’ gallery staircase.
Graves drifted aside, his face blank. He had waited at the foot of those stairs all evening.
Nana pressed her hands over her mouth; whether in horror or satisfaction, Elizabeth could not tell.
George Darcy stood at the foot of the stairs, looking down at the body of the man who had murdered him.
His expression was the same blank mask Darcy wore at Hunsford: processing something shocking, something he did not know how to answer.
Darcy was already moving. He pushed through the crowd, knelt beside Wickham’s body. Elizabeth saw him press his fingers to Wickham’s neck. She saw his face when he looked up. She knew before he spoke.
“Send for the physician,” Darcy said. His voice carried across the silent ballroom. “And clear the room, please. My sincerest apologies, but the ball is over.”
The guests left. They left in a confusion of carriages, cloaks, hushed voices: three hundred people who had come to dance, to eat, to judge the new Mrs Darcy, now going home with a different story entirely.
A man had fallen from the musicians’ gallery.
He had been drinking. The stairs were so steep.
A terrible accident. What a dreadful end to such a lovely evening.
Elizabeth stood in the entrance hall and watched them go.
She stood with her face composed, thanking each guest as they left, because she was the mistress of Pemberley; this was her duty.
If her voice was steady, her eyes dry, it was because she had no tears left after the afternoon, no composure left to lose.
Jane was with Lydia. Elizabeth had heard the scream when Lydia was told, a raw, animal sound from somewhere deep in the house.
Then Kitty’s voice, low, steady. Jane’s.
Then quiet. Kitty had gone to Lydia because despite everything Lydia was still her sister and Kitty would not leave her alone in this.
Bingley hovered nearby, trying to help and getting it slightly wrong but meaning every word of comfort he offered, which was Bingley’s way and always had been.
Lord Matlock managed the physician when he arrived, and the removal of the body, and the dozen practical matters that attend a sudden death in a great house.
Lady Matlock managed the guests who were staying overnight up to their rooms without delay.
Mrs Reynolds managed the servants, who were deeply shaken.
The last carriage pulled away. The entrance hall emptied.
The candles that had guttered, blown out, had been relit.
The ballroom glowed again, warm, golden, as though nothing had happened.
The chalk pattern on the floor was scuffed and stained, the white curlicues smudged by three hundred pairs of feet and one man’s blood.
The lilies by the entrance still smelled sweet.
Darcy found Elizabeth in the hallway outside the ballroom. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her ball gown creased and her hair coming down from the pins Jane had set so carefully. He stood before her, looking at her face. She opened her eyes. Looked back at him.
He knew, she could see it in his eyes. Not the details, of course.
Not Sir Roderick, not the push, not the army of spectral Darcys and their loyal-even-after-death retainers who had watched their house deliver its own justice.
But he knew that what had happened on that staircase was not an accident, that Elizabeth had seen it, and he knew that she would tell him, because she had promised that he could ask her anything and she would keep no more secrets from him.
“He fell,” Elizabeth said.
“He fell,” Darcy agreed.
“The physician will say he was drunk. The stairs are steep, and they had been well-polished, to look good for the ball. It will be ruled an accident.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Darcy was quiet for a moment. The hallway was empty. The house was quiet, quieter than Elizabeth had ever known it. Even the ghosts were still. Graves had returned to the servants’ hall. Mrs Alcott had gone with him. Sarah Dunn had vanished. The gallery above was empty.
“My father,” Darcy said, and she heard something like fear in his voice. “Was it...”
“No. Your father was on the ballroom floor the whole time. He was standing beside me. He watched, but he did not act. It was Sir Roderick.”
“Sir Roderick?” Darcy blinked, and she could see him searching his memory. “I know that name...”
Elizabeth pressed the back of her head against the wall.
“He was Nana’s husband’s great-grandfather, or maybe one or two more greats than that, who was master of Pemberley in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
He’d been asleep in the yellow drawing room for as long as anyone can remember.
Nana was afraid of what would happen if he ever woke up. ”
“And he woke.”
“He woke. He came into the ballroom, went up the stairs, pushed Wickham over the railing. I didn’t think ghosts could touch the living. They can’t, as a rule. Sir Roderick isn’t a ghost who follows rules.”
Darcy leaned against the wall beside her. They stood shoulder to shoulder, both of them exhausted, both of them in their ball clothes, both of them carrying a truth that would never be spoken aloud again after tonight.
“Wickham’s death mirrors his crime,” Elizabeth said, after a long silence. “It looks natural. Accidental. A man who had been drinking, slipping on a steep staircase. Only we know the truth.”
“Only we will ever know.”
“Can you live with that?”
Darcy opened his eyes. He looked at her. “Can you?”
Elizabeth thought about it. She had said no, stop, please and it had made no difference, because Sir Roderick did not take orders from anyone.
She had watched a man die and she had not been able to prevent it and she was not entirely certain, in the darkest, most honest part of herself, that she had wanted to.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I can. I will have to, won’t I?”
Darcy took her hand. He held it against the wall between them, his fingers laced through hers.
“Then we carry it together,” he said. “The way we carry everything else.” He leaned over and kissed her brow, tenderly. “Go to bed, Elizabeth. Sleep. I will stay up and wait for the doctor.”
The house was quiet around them. Somewhere in Pemberley, Lydia was crying. In the yellow drawing room, Sir Roderick Darcy had gone back to his chair, closed his eyes, and slept.