The Facts of the Matter
The small sitting room off the passage smelled only faintly of smoke. Someone had lit the fire and brought tea that nobody touched.
Mrs Nicholls sat to one side, managing the crisis with composed determination and refusing to acknowledge it as one. Henderson was at the window, which put him in shadow.
Morris stood near the door with the same stillness Elizabeth had noticed before and now understood rather better.
Mr Darcy stood by the mantelpiece and did not look at her.
Elizabeth sat down and folded her hands in her lap.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Bingley said, with an effort at his usual warmth that did not quite reach his eyes. “I am so sorry to keep you at this hour. We only have a few questions, if you feel able.”
“I am perfectly able,” Elizabeth said. “Ask them.”
Bingley glanced at Mr Darcy, who gave the smallest nod.
“Tell us what happened,” Mr Bingley said. “From the moment you entered the library.”
“I went to find a book,” she said. “The door was difficult, as it had been all evening. I found a volume and sat by the fire. A maid came in with candles. She said Miss Bingley had sent her.”
Bingley looked up sharply. “Caroline was at the card table all evening. She said nothing to me about sending anyone to the library.”
“No,” Elizabeth said quietly. “I did not think she had.”
She had not thought it at the time. She was thinking it now, sitting in this room, hearing herself say it aloud, and understanding what it meant.
“Can you describe her?” Morris said quietly from his corner.
Elizabeth turned slightly. She had not forgotten he was there.
“Young. Seventeen or eighteen perhaps. Dark hair under her cap, worn low. Medium height, slight build.” She considered. “Her hands were not a servant’s hands. No roughness. And her curtsey was practised rather than habitual.”
Morris nodded once.
“You noticed all of that,” Mr Darcy said.
“I told you,” Elizabeth said. “I notice most things. I simply did not know at the time what I was noticing.”
“Was there anything else you remember?” Bingley asked.
“The maid,” Elizabeth said. “She was not at ease. She set the candles down and then adjusted one, though it had not needed adjusting. She looked at the door twice before she left. And the candles were placed against the edge of the table, where the curtain hung nearest. Not in the centre.”
“And the bell pull,” Mr Darcy said.
Elizabeth looked at him directly for the first time since she had entered the room. “It moved and fell silent. I pulled it once; There was no sound.”
“You pulled it once,” he repeated.
“I did not need to pull it twice to understand it was not going to work.”
“And she was not one of the maids I had seen before in the house,” Elizabeth added. “Though I would not claim to know all of them. I have only been here a few days.”
“But you had not seen her before,” Morris said.
“Not that I can recall. She did not have the manner of someone who belonged here. She looked at the door as though she was uncertain of the way out.”
Morris exchanged a brief glance with Henderson that Elizabeth caught and filed away.
“Thank you, Miss Elizabeth,” Mr Darcy said. “That is most helpful.”
He was using his careful voice. She recognised it. She did not like it.
“Mr Darcy,” she said. “I have answered your questions. I should like to ask one or two of my own.”
Bingley turned from the window.
“The bell pull was cut,” Elizabeth said. “Not broken. Not worn through. Morris told you it was cut. I heard him. That maid did not act alone.”
“No,” Mr Darcy said at last. “She did not.”
“Then who sent her?”
Mr Bingley had plainly been waiting for this conversation for some time and intended to hear it out.
“I have suspicions,” Mr Darcy said. “I cannot yet prove them.”
“That is not the whole of it,” Elizabeth said.
“No,” he said. “It is not.”
“But it is all you intend to tell me tonight.”
“It is all I am able to tell you tonight,” Mr Darcy said at last. “With any certainty.”
“Then I must hope your certainty improves quickly,” she said.
Mrs Nicholls rose from her chair with quiet efficiency. “Shall I see Miss Elizabeth upstairs, sir?”
“Please,” Mr Darcy said.
At the door, Elizabeth said, “Mr Darcy.”
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“You need not mistake patience for ignorance.”
The silence behind her was immediate.
Then Mr Darcy said, very quietly, “I shall endeavour not to.”
She went out. Mrs Nicholls followed, and the door closed quietly behind them.
Bingley sat back down heavily.
“Could it have been an accident?”
“The candles,” Bingley said. “A careless maid. It happens. Old curtains, a candle placed too close.”
“The lock was turned from outside.”
“Could it have stuck? Old houses, the mechanisms.”
“The bell pull was cut.”
Bingley fell silent.
“It was not an accident,” Darcy said quietly.
Bingley stood and walked to the window, though there was nothing to see but darkness. “Then why the library? Why not, I do not know, why burn the house?”
“They did not intend to burn the house. They intended the library to burn with me in it.”
“No,” Bingley said. “No, I cannot. Your sister’s husband. Your father trusted him. He sits at your table. He has children.” He shook his head. “This maid. She was young, Miss Elizabeth said. Seventeen perhaps. Could she not simply be unwell? Addled in some way? A fixation, a delusion.”
“The bell pull was cut,” Darcy said patiently.
“Someone could have cut it before. A coincidence.”
“Bingley.”
“Or a grievance against the household, against someone else entirely, a private malice.”
“Bingley.” Darcy’s voice was very quiet. “I have had five years to consider every alternative explanation. The curricle wheel that failed on the road to Lambton. The bridge that gave way beneath me. Caesar drugged and my saddle tampered with. Last night was not the first attempt.”
Bingley went very still.
“How many?” he said at last.
“Enough,” Darcy said, “that I stopped calling them accidents some time ago.”
The fire had burned very low. Outside, the first grey light was beginning at the edges of the curtains.
Bingley stood abruptly, crossed to the sideboard, and poured himself a measure of brandy with hands that were not entirely steady.
“I am going to send for the magistrate,” he said.
“Bingley.”
“Someone tried to burn down my library with two people in it. There is a cut bell pull and a turned lock and a woman who placed candles against a curtain and walked out of my house.” His voice was very even.
“I am the master of Netherfield. This happened under my roof. I am sending for the magistrate.”
“And what will you tell him?” Darcy said quietly.
“That you suspect your guest’s guardian arranged it?
Wickham is a gentleman of good standing, and he remains my guardian until a court removes him or I reach my majority.
A magistrate is unlikely to act against him on suspicion alone.
Any magistrate he chooses to involve would be unlikely to act against him. ”
“I will tell him what happened,” Bingley said. “The facts. The lock. The bell pull. The maid who has disappeared.”
“And when Wickham’s lawyers argue that it was an accident?”
“Then we have evidence to the contrary.” Bingley set his glass down. “Darcy. I understand that you have been managing this carefully for five years. I understand that you have reasons for every decision you have made. But you nearly died in my house last night.”
“And Miss Elizabeth,” Bingley said. His voice had changed. “She was in that room, Darcy. Locked in, with a fire, and no way out that anyone knew of. If she had not remembered that doorway.”
“I know,” Darcy said.
“Do you? Because you are sitting there talking about lawyers and legal standing and August, and I am sitting here thinking about Miss Elizabeth Bennet telling us very calmly that the bell pull moved and fell silent, and she did not need to pull it twice.” He picked up his glass again.
“She knew. In that room, she knew it was not an accident. And she pushed that bookcase through the smoke anyway.”
“She saved your life,” Bingley said.
“Yes,” Darcy said. “She did.”
“Then you owe her more than careful management and strategic silence.” Bingley set his glass down with more force than he intended. “The magistrate. In the morning. And then you are going to tell me what you intend to do about Miss Elizabeth.”
“Not tonight,” Darcy said.
“Soon,” Bingley said.
Darcy had not gone to bed. There seemed no point. He had sat in the chair by the window of his room and watched the sky lighten from black to grey to the pale cold blue of a November morning, and thought about Elizabeth Bennet.
He thought about her laugh at the assembly, heard before he saw her. He thought about a question asked on a dance floor, “Then how will you know, when you have?”, and his own answer, which he had meant as philosophy and had turned out to be prophecy.
He thought about Lucas Lodge, and Sir William’s well-meaning interference, and the look on her face when he said that may depend upon who is doing the bringing.
He thought about her pushing a bookcase through smoke without being asked. He thought about her hand on his arm in the garden last night. Then we understand each other. He thought about eight months and twenty days, and what they meant, and what he could not do until they were gone.
He thought about Wickham, who had sent a woman with candles and a turned lock and a cut bell pull, and had not succeeded, and would try again.
He thought about Elizabeth in the path of it.
Eight months and twenty days was a very long time.
Fletcher appeared at six without being summoned.
Very little happened in this house that Fletcher did not know.
He set coffee on the table without comment, took one look at Darcy’s coat, and withdrew to fetch another.
Outside, the grounds were grey and still. The stable yard was quiet. Somewhere in the house a door opened and closed, and footsteps crossed the floor above him, and the ordinary machinery of morning began to turn as though nothing had happened.