Chapter 17 Mistress’ Suite
Jennings opened the door to the mistress’ suite, and all four walked in to look around.
Darcy gasped in horror. “This looks just as hideous as my mother left it! It is worse than Rosings. I thought Mrs Darcy would redecorate it—not just my Mrs Darcy—but anyone with taste. I cannot imagine someone sleeping in it without nightmares.”
Jennings chuckled grimly. “I believe this is a message for us, and not a particularly subtle one.”
“Explain, if you would,” Darcy asked, feeling he was missing an important piece of the puzzle, or more likely several.
Mrs Reynolds replied, “She did hate the room on first sight. She had us swap all the furniture from the one down the hall that your sister redecorated into here. I asked her when she planned to redecorate in earnest, but she said she was perfectly satisfied. I tried not to read too much into it, but assumed it just meant she wanted to get her bearings before choosing how she wanted it to look permanently, or possibly she wanted to wait for your return, so she knew what her limits were—or—”
When she trailed off, Darcy looked carefully at her. “Or what, Mrs Reynolds?”
The housekeeper let out a great sigh, and mumbled, “Or if she would even live here. I am not convinced she considered it a foregone conclusion,” while staring at the floor.
Darcy ducked his head even further in shame and embarrassment, while truly feeling the crushing weight of humiliation for his own actions.
He tried to imagine what his wife had felt but was not about to pretend he could understand.
Was it ten times what he was feeling? A hundred?
A thousand? He would never know, but he owed it to his wife, and to himself, to try his best.
Needing to do something positive rather than wallowing in guilt, he looked around and asked, “What happened?”
"She clearly moved everything back," replied Mrs Reynolds softly. She spent a moment looking around the room before continuing, "As far as I can tell, she put everything back exactly where it was the night she arrived."
Jennings added, “She must have used Noah and Molly to do the move in the middle of that last night. That is the only way she could get it done without my knowledge. I would have heard if she used any more footmen, or they did it during daylight. They could do it in two or three hours if they put their backs into it, and Mrs Darcy was not a wilting flower or afraid of hard work.”
Darcy looked around. “So… a message to me, and as you said, about as subtle as a razor-sharp axe.”
“Yes sir.”
Darcy looked around the bedroom and saw some small piles on the dressing table. He hurried across the room to examine them carefully, calling the others to join.
Knight said, “This first is another message,” and pointed to the pile on the left, which consisted of two ten-pound bank notes lying neatly atop each other, and a small handful of coins.
“If I am not mistaken, these are the two exact notes I gave Mrs Darcy for her first two quarters’ pin money.
They both have a grease stain I got at the blacksmith.
The coins add up to the exact amount I gave her to prorate her first eight days of marriage in December.
It is all her pin money since her marriage, to the penny. ”
Darcy clenched his teeth and grumbled, “I am of a mind to take all responsibility on myself, Knight, but in a less forgiving mood, I would say that was badly done—very badly. I instructed you to pay her pin money, but I do not recall suggesting you humiliate her—though I suppose that might be one of my many lost memories.”
Knight looked at the ground. “I have been kicking myself for that for months. She came here as both a vulnerable young woman and the mistress, and I did not respect that. I can offer no excuse. I will tender my resignation.”
“You will do no such thing!” Darcy snapped; then slightly more reasonably, he continued, “We all had our part in this debacle, and we will all have our part in the remedy. The lion’s share of the blame is mine, and so must the remedy be, but I will expect all of you to try to help find her.
I cannot be distracted looking for a new steward just now, and you have a right to your own repentance, I suppose. ”
Knight nodded, still not entirely certain his position was secure, but the master was right. They all had a part to play, and the most important thing was finding Mrs Darcy before the trail became too cold.
While Darcy and the steward were talking, Darcy’s valet entered the room. “Welcome home, sir. I see you received the message.”
“Thank you, Bates. Travelling without you was the second stupidest mistake of my life, though I suspect Fitzwilliam profited from my delayed action, since his release was secured through happenstance.”
“I shall be certain to travel with you the next time you embark on such a foolhardy mission, sir.”
Darcy chuckled, happy to have his old valet back. Bates had never been intimidated by much, and though he never stepped even an inch out of propriety in company, he had known all the inhabitants of the room for many years.
Darcy chuckled. “You say this is a message. You saw the room before?”
“Yes sir. I assisted Mrs Darcy when—”
Darcy chuckled. “You need not say it. I heard about the brandy.”
“Very good, sir. Mrs Reynolds wisely locked the door when Mrs Darcy did not return, but there are four doors into the suite. I entered from the master’s to look around.”
“What did you see?”
Bates pointed to the piles on the dresser. “That last item, the lady’s purse, belongs to Mrs Darcy. I found it in your things after you shipped out for France and returned it to her.”
Darcy stared at the purse for several minutes, then asked, “How in the world did I end up with that?”
“You do not remember?”
“Typhus wreaked havoc with my memory. For a while, I did not even know my own name, but most of it has come back,” he said, and then he stared off into space for some time, and finally continued, “I think most, but not all, and I am never quite certain where something is missing. The doctor thinks I have recovered all I am likely to, but he also readily admitted that they do not really know, and the results vary widely.”
“I have never had typhus, but I forget things all the time. I do not recommend blaming every lapse of memory on your illness. It promotes indolence of thought.”
Bates knew he had stepped well over the line, but he also saw that Darcy could easily fall into the bad habit of gloom and despair given half a chance, and preferred that he not do so.
The valet was well past pension age, had plenty of money, a warm fire and, as Mrs Darcy had surmised, mischievous grandchildren, so he was not worried about his position.
He considered it his duty to help Mr Darcy, whether the gentleman wanted it or not.
Darcy found the advice useful, as he could see that his old valet had a wisdom that should be appreciated, so he sat down for a few minutes to think about the problem, while his companions worked on the mystery of the other two piles of coins.
Both piles were not an enormous amount of money, but they were obviously a message in the form of a puzzle, because each had some amount of money calculated to the penny.
After a few minutes, he smacked his forehead with his palm. “Idiot!”
That got everyone’s attention, and he said, “Mr Bennet gave me that purse at my wedding, and bade me give it to my wife.” Then he smacked his head again and frowned. “One simple job, and I could not even do that.”
Bates said, “She left it here for you. Shall we see what, if anything, is in it?”
Darcy opened the purse, but found it entirely empty, so he said, “I suppose the meaning of the purse will become clear later?”
Bates said, “If I may surmise—”
“Pray, do.”
“The message seems clear enough to me. She is telling you to talk to her father if you want to know what was in it.”
Darcy chewed on that for a moment. “I believe you are right, Bates. She is also saying, ‘Listen to Bates,’ as she must have known you would tell me that. Did you see her after the initial encounter?”
“No, I did not. Now I wish I had returned. I could have helped her.”
“Do not chastise yourself. You cannot solve all my problems for me.”
Mrs Reynolds said, “Mr Knight and I believe we have solved the mystery of the last two piles.”
“Go on.”
She pointed to the middle pile. “I just showed Mrs Darcy the accounts for the first of June. As far as I can tell, she took the total cost of the food for the estate for the last six months and divided it by the total number of servants, plus one, then multiplied by three.”
Unable to follow, Darcy asked, “Pray, explain.”
Knight said, “She paid for her own food. The other pile is the wages for the maid and the footman she took with her, going back to January, as far as I can make out.”
Darcy sighed. “You were right, it is a message, and not a subtle one. I assume she took her trunk and nothing else.”
“It would appear so.”
“The message was that she was taking nothing from this estate or its master,” and then he fell back into a chair in despair.
Unfortunately, it was one of his mother’s chairs that matched an identical one at Rosings, so it nearly broke his back when he fell into it. He had to laboriously climb back up and pace around the room in anger and frustration for several minutes just to get his equilibrium.
Finally, he turned to his companions. “How in the world did she manage it? Was that purse loaded with money?”
Bates looked guilty. “I may be able to surmise. The purse had no bills. I obviously did not look inside, but I felt what I took to be a handwritten note. It was cut unevenly, and not the right size for a banknote. It had coins that I would estimate to be about twenty to forty pounds based on their weight. I would be surprised if it was enough to travel far while paying travel and lodging expenses for two servants—but it would get them by for a few weeks. It could easily get them to London or Hertfordshire.”
“Do not assume too much. They both seem loyal to her, so they may not be taking their wages.”
Bates looked at the stacks of coins. “Those two stacks make nearly twenty pounds. If the money in her purse was all she had, most of it would still be there on the vanity. She must have some other source of funds.”
Darcy thought for a moment, then admitted Bates was correct. “So, she had no apparent source of funds, no income, received no post, and, as far as we know, had no way to get anywhere very far away, or live once she got there, correct?”
Everyone nodded in confusion, thoroughly unable to think how it would all work out.
Darcy stood up straighter, thinking it was about time to quit whining about his dismal position.
“We all know perfectly well that nothing valuable was stolen from the house, so how did she do it? If we can work that out, maybe we can use that to find her. I think it is time to start talking to the people who knew her.”
“Discreetly!” warned Mrs Reynolds. “We have kept her departure a closely guarded secret. Of course, everyone knows she is not here, but nobody outside this room knows she is gone, or the fact that we have no idea where she is, and if or when she will return.”
“Yes,” Darcy agreed. “The circle is tight, and we need to keep it that way. Once she is found, her absence can be easily explained with some fiction—if I can get her to return, that is. If she is not found—well—I am not prepared to contemplate that possibility, but I must, sooner or later.”
Mrs Reynolds frowned, and Darcy said, “Do not give me that look. You know I cannot and would not force her to return, but I want my wife back. I know I must earn the privilege, and I do know it is an uphill battle, but I cannot begin until we find her.”
All his companions nodded in agreement.
Darcy thought for a few minutes and finally said, “I will start with Bartlet and Longman. Knight, you poke around in Lambton and the outside staff but use the utmost discretion. I do not want news of her departure leaking if it is unnecessary, but err on the side of finding her, not preserving our reputations. Locating her is paramount, and this would not be the first Darcy scandal, nor the last. We will weather it.”
“Yes sir.”
Darcy looked at the clock. “I have time to talk to Bartlet before dinner. I believe I will emulate Mrs Darcy for the duration, Mrs Reynolds. I will take a tray when I return.”
She frowned. “That is easy enough, sir. We are accustomed to it, but are you sure it is for the best?”
“I am not sure of anything.”
“A wise attitude, sir.”
Darcy looked pensive, then finally just shook his head, and went to get a horse for the ride into Lambton. He thought he might as well ride Omega and try to understand what his wife saw in the beast.