… this abortive campaign shall be adjudged a failure of Castlereagh’s, and a discomfiture to Portland’s government …
I could make little of all this; the web of policy, again, too entangled to comprehend. Certainly the abortive defence of Sweden had been followed by the even more ignominious expedition to Walcheren, an island in the Scheldt, which Lord Harold had not lived to see — forty thousand troops, thirty-five ships of the line, more than two hundred smaller vessels, and very little to show for it, while behind our backs, the French arrogantly installed Buonaparte’s brother on the throne of Spain. Again, the pressing need to crush the Enemy in the Peninsula had given way to a fool’s errand in the northern seas. Lord Harold was clearly disturbed by a discrepancy in intelligence— but he wrote to himself in these pages, as a man does when he ruminates upon anxieties in his mind: elliptical and reflective, without the need for explanation. Not for the first time, I wished acutely for his living presence.
One name, however, had leapt out at me from the journal’s pages: Moira. Lord Harold had known Henry’s intimate friend, the debt-ridden Earl. I should have expected it; both men had been bred up as Whigs from infancy.
The plaintive sounding of a clock somewhere in chambers alerted me to the fact that the day was much advanced; Eliza would be wondering if I were lost. I slipped the bottle-green volume into my reticule and locked Lord Harold’s chest.
ELIZA WAS, INDEED, ANXIOUSLY AWAITING MY return — but it was Madame Bigeon who informed me of the fact. Manon’s aging mother answered my pull of the front doorbell. When I would have stepped into the hall, she urged in a rapid undertone, “Pray, mademoiselle, do not for the love of Heaven delay, but go for Monsieur Henri at once!”
“Is it Eliza? She is — unwell?” I managed.
Madame shook her head. “It is the Runners. Bow Street is in the house!”
Chapter 9
The Gryphon and the Eagle
Thursday, 25 April 1811, cont.
“FETCH ME INK AND PAPER, AND I SHALL REQUIRE the hackney to carry a note to Henry,” I told madame — but before she could hasten on her errand, a barrel-chested fellow in a dull grey coat and a squat, unlovely hat had barred the passage behind her.
“What’s all this?” he demanded, surveying me with a pair of eyes both sharp and small in a pudding face. “Are you the mort what’s visiting from the country?” 1
“I am Miss Austen. This is my brother’s house. And who, my good sir, are you?”
The question appeared to surprise him. Perhaps the better part of his interlocutors were too stunned at the awful sight of a Runner — the terrible gravity of the Law, and Newgate’s dire bulk rising before their eyes — to enquire of the man’s name.
“Clem Black,” he said. “Of Bow Street.”
“So I understand.” I took off my bonnet and set it carefully on the table in Eliza’s hall. “What is your business here?”
I spoke calmly, but in truth was prey to the most lively apprehension on the Henry Austens’ behalf. There could be only one explanation for the presence of a Clem Black in the house: my poor brother was even more embarrassed in his circumstances than his partner James Tilson could apprehend. Perhaps there had been a run on the bank. Perhaps Austen, Maunde & Tilson had discovered a discrepancy in the accounts. Perhaps Henry — so recently installed in this stylish new home, with its furniture made to order and its fittings very fine — had felt his purse to be pinched, and had dipped into the bank’s funds without the knowledge of his partners.
But at this thought my mind rebelled. Not even Henry — lighthearted and given over to pleasure as he so often was — would violate the most fundamental precept of his chosen profession. When it came to the management of another man’s money, Henry was wont to observe, a banker must be worthy of his trust.
“You’re a cool one, ain’t ye?” Clem Black said with grudging admiration. “The other gentry mort[10] is indulging in spasms and such. If you’d be so good, ma’am, as to come with me—”
I bowed my head and preceded him into Eliza’s front drawing-room, where so recently the crowd of gentlemen and ladies had stood, in heat and self-importance, to listen to Miss Davis and her brood in the singing of their glees. Eliza was reclined upon a sopha, Manon engaged in waving a vinaigrette beneath her nose; but at my appearance my sister reared up, her countenance quite pink, and said, “Ah — not Henry. I had hoped— Still, it is probably for the best. We may delay the unhappy intelligence as long as possible. Jane, I have wronged you — and I cannot rest until I have assured you that the injury was unknowingly done.”
“Hush, Eliza,” I murmured, and joined her on the sopha. “What has occurred?”
“That man” — she inclined her head in the direction of a second Runner I now perceived to be nearly hidden by the drawing-room draperies, his gaze roaming Sloane Street as it darkened beyond the window — “that man has quite cut up my peace. Indeed, indeed, Jane, I should never have undertaken the errand had I suspected the slightest irregularity!”
“Eliza, pray calm yourself. Manon — leave off the vinaigrette and fetch some claret for la comtesse. You, sir — can you account for the extreme distress and misery you have occasioned in a most beloved sister?”
The man at the window turned. At the sight of his face I drew a sudden breath, for its aspect was decidedly sinister. Two pale agates of eyes stared full into my own; a pair of bitter lips twisted beneath a lumpen mass of nose; and the left cheek bore the welt of an old wound — the path of a pistol ball, that had barely missed killing him. He was not above the middle height, but gave an impression of strength in the quiet command of limbs that might have served a prize-fighter.
“You are Miss Jane Austen,” he said.
“I am. But you have the advantage of me, Mr.—”
“Skroggs. William Skroggs. I am a chief constable of Bow Street. Do you know what that means?”
“I am not unacquainted with the office—”
“It means,” he said softly, advancing upon me without blinking an eye, “that I have the power to drag you before a magistrate, lay a charge, provide evidence, and see you hang, Miss Austen — all for the prize of a bit of blood-money, like. I’ve done the same for thirteen year, now, give or take a day or two, and I find my taste for the work only increases.”
He was trying to frighten me. I stared back at him, therefore, without a waver, my hands clasped in my lap. “Do not attempt to bully me in my brother’s house, Mr. Skroggs. His friends are more powerful than yours. Be so good as to explain your errand and have done.”
The corners of the cruel mouth lifted. “With pleasure,” he said, and lifted a wooden box onto Eliza’s Pembroke table.
I recognised it immediately. I had carried it myself into Rundell & Bridge, playing country cousin to Eliza’s grande dame.
“How did you come by those jewels?” I demanded sharply.
Bill Skroggs — I could not conceive of him as William — halted in the act of opening the lid. “Amusing,” he observed, with a leer for his colleague Clem Black, — “I was just about to pose the same question to Miss Austen myself.”
I glanced at Eliza in consternation. She was propped on her cushions, eyes closed, a handkerchief pressed to her lips. It was possible she had fainted; but certain that she had no intention of crossing swords with the Runners. It was left to the novelist to weave a suitable tale.