Chapter 37
Bennet had not left the kitchen.
A small journal lay open before him on the scrubbed table, with a sharpened pencil, a folded map of the lanes, and a list of every person known to have crossed Longbourn’s grounds since breakfast. He had drawn the day into hours, the hours into names, and the names into narrow marks that might, if Providence proved merciful and men proved observant, become direction.
Cook had ceased urging broth upon him near midnight. Mrs Hill had ceased asking whether he would be more comfortable in the library soon after. They had accepted him at last as one accepts a chair set inconveniently in the way: awkward, immovable, and not to be reasoned with.
He had tried to make himself as little an offence as possible.
The kitchen belonged to women. He had known that in the careless manner by which a gentleman knows the machinery that feeds him: grate, table, dresser, copper, pantry door, Cook’s floury authority, Mrs Hill’s chatelaine.
Yet he had never truly understood how much of Longbourn lived here, nor how little of it required him.
His own rooms had always seemed the centre of the house because his wife had come to him there, bringing triumph, anxiety, news of daughters, perfume, and a love he had too often answered poorly.
He knew the grain of his library desk better than he knew the rooms she governed.
Mrs Hill moved behind him without sound, save for the faint chime of keys at her waist. Cook bent over the hearth, her sleeves rolled and her face grey with wakefulness. Neither woman wept. That restraint had become another labour in the room.
Bennet marked the next line.
Four o’clock. No return.
He looked at the yard door.
The latch lifted.
Dawes stepped in alone, bringing the night air upon his coat. Dust lightened his boots to the knee, and one sleeve was torn. He took off his hat when he saw Bennet at the table.
“Sir.”
Mrs Hill moved at once, but Bennet lifted one hand.
“Report first.”
Dawes swallowed. “North road, sir. I went as far as the old milestone, then back by the ditch line.”
Bennet set his pencil to the page. “Time?”
“Left my place at half past eight. Reached the milestone near ten. Saw two sets of wheels after the second stile, but the ground is too cut to swear to direction.”
“Persons?”
“None after sunset, sir. Before that, Mrs Goulding’s boy drove sheep towards Lucas’s land, and old Vickers took a barrow along the north hedge. Neither saw Miss Elizabeth.”
Bennet wrote the names.
“Warm yourself,” he said. “Drink.”
“Yes, sir.”
Only then did Mrs Hill touch Dawes’s sleeve and draw him towards the hearth. Cook put a mug into his hands without speaking.
The yard door opened again before Dawes had finished the mug.
Tom Weller came in with his hat crushed in one hand and hedge-seed caught along his coat. He was a broad man, not easily hurried; yet he stopped two paces inside the kitchen.
“Sir.”
Bennet turned a clean page.
“Weller.”
“I took the Oakham track, as Hill said. Went past the lower copse and up by the field gate.”
“Time?”
“Left at nine. Reached the rise before ten. There were cart marks near the bend.”
Bennet’s pencil stilled.
“What sort?”
“A light cart. Two wheels. Not broad enough for a hay-wain, not fine enough for a gig. It had stood close by the hedge.”
Dawes lowered his mug.
Bennet looked up. “Stood?”
“Yes, sir.” Weller’s throat moved. “There was grass pressed under the wheel, and the horse had shifted more than once. It had waited there.”
Mrs Hill’s hand tightened upon her keys.
“Direction?” Bennet asked.
“Lost it where the ground turned hard. I followed as far as the lower road, then could not swear to it. I would not bring you guesses.”
“No,” Bennet said. “You were correct not to.”
Weller looked at the table, then back at him. “I went over the hedge line twice. Found no cloth, no glove, no ribbon.”
No bonnet.
Bennet wrote: cart waited by hedge.
The pencil point broke. The sound was small.
Every face in the kitchen turned towards it.
Bennet laid the useless pencil beside the journal and took up another.
“Who else saw the marks?”
“No one, sir. I kept back from the cottages.”
“Good.”
Weller’s shoulders lowered a little.
“Warm yourself.”
Weller accepted a mug and moved beside Dawes. Their heads nearly touched as they whispered.
Bennet consulted his watch. The hands had moved past four. Hill had not returned. Perkins had yet to report.
He wrote both names beneath the last line and left the space beside them blank.
The kitchen settled again. The fire gave a low shift in the grate. Cook took Dawes’s empty mug and filled it without asking. Mrs Hill stood near the dresser with her hands clasped before her, her keys still.
Then came the sound of horses in the yard.
Not the slow approach of a man returning from a common errand. The hoofs came hard to the stones, checked sharply, and stopped.
Mrs Hill turned towards the door.
Bennet did not rise.
The latch lifted.
Hill entered first. His coat was open, his cravat loosened, and dust lay across one cheek where he had wiped at sweat with a dirty hand. Perkins came behind him, bareheaded, broad shoulders bent as if the lintel had struck him.
Perkins held something in both hands.
Mrs Hill made one sound, very small, and pressed it back with her fingers.
Bennet looked at the object before he looked at the man.
A bonnet. Elizabeth’s bonnet. The crown had been crushed in, and one ribbon hung torn and darkened where dust had taken the silk. A thorn still clung to the other ribbon, caught in the knot.
Perkins came no farther than the flagstones inside the door.
“Sir.”
Bennet closed the journal.
“Where?”
“By the lower lane, sir. Not on the road. Deep in the hedge. I saw it only when the light came. In the hedge, where the bramble turns before the old ash.”
Weller set down his mug.
Bennet’s hand remained upon the closed journal. “Near the cart marks?”
Perkins looked once at Hill.
“Say it,” Bennet said.
“Yes, sir. Near enough.”
Hill stepped forward. “There was scuffed ground beside it. Two men, I think. One pair of boots heavier than the other. A woman’s print, half overrun. Grass dragged towards where Weller found the cart stood.”
Mrs Hill gripped the dresser.
Bennet looked at the bonnet again.
“Blood?”
“No, sir,” Hill said at once. “None that I saw.”
The answer should have comforted him. It did not. There were harms that left no blood upon a bonnet.
He held out his hand.
Perkins crossed the room and placed the bonnet upon the table as gently as if it might wake.
Bennet touched the torn ribbon.
For a moment, the kitchen, the servants, the tenants, the fire, the journal, all withdrew to the edge of sense. He saw only Elizabeth’s hand tying that ribbon beneath her chin, impatient with the knot, laughing because the wind had taken the brim against her cheek.
Then the moment passed.
He drew the bonnet closer and looked at Hill.
“Who knows?”
“Only Perkins and me, sir. Weller saw the marks. Dawes knows nothing of this.”
“Then it remains so.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bennet opened the journal again. His pencil hovered above the page.
“Time found?”
“Near dawn,” Hill said. “A little before first light.”
“Who has crossed that lane since midnight?”
Perkins swallowed. “No one I saw, sir.”
“Since noon yesterday?”
“Two carts before dark. One from Goulding’s side. One I could not name. A boy with sheep. Vickers with his barrow. No lady.”
Bennet wrote each word.
“Perkins.”
“Sir.”
“You will go home by the back way. You will tell your wife I required you on estate business and nothing more.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Weller, Dawes, the same. If any neighbour asks, you were mending a fence by moonlight because I have become unreasonable in my old age.”
No one smiled.
“Go separately. Keep to your farms. If I send, come at once. Bring no sons.”
The men bowed and withdrew one by one, slow with fatigue.
Hill remained.
Mrs Hill still stood by the dresser, her eyes fixed upon the bonnet.
“Mrs Hill.”
She looked at him.
“Put it away. Somewhere no maid will see it.”
Her mouth trembled once. “Yes, sir.”
She came forward, lifted Elizabeth’s bonnet from the table, and held it against her apron.
Bennet closed the journal again.