I turned, and perceived Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton. He appeared remarkably easy for a man discovered in his host's entry hall at two o'clock in the morning. Tho' his words suggested chagrin, there was an air of amused calculation about his countenance. I judged that he had only just quitted the library; all behind him was dark.
“Good evening, sir.” I contrived to hold my voice steady. “I collect you have been rifling my brother's desk, in a fruitless search for Mrs. Grey's letters. You would have done better to credit him with a degree of honesty you cannot share, when first he informed you that your name was not to be found in their passages.”
“Good evening, Miss Austen,” he replied with a courtly bow. “As you are so familiar with the lady's correspondence, I need not remind you that my friend Sothey's name is everywhere in evidence. It behooved me to ensure that Sothey's connexion with Mrs. Grey, and her dubious undertakings for the Emperor of France, should never come to light.”
“Did you protect him as ardently last Monday, somewhere along the Wingham road?” I retorted.
“If by that question, you would enquire whether I throttled Mrs. Grey, I must answer in the negative. I might offer you my word as a gentleman — but I perceive that you hold me in something like contempt, Miss Austen. More to the point, we are all most abominably situated in this draughty hall. If a full explanation is to be undertaken, I suggest we remove to the library, where we might dispose ourselves in greater comfort.”
“The library?” cried my brother Neddie with considerable indignation. He held aloft a taper, and stared at us all from the library doorway, with undisguised disgust. “Say rather the kitchens! I have been standing fully two hours behind these damnable drapes, and I refuse to remain in that room a moment longer! If your sense of honour requires an explanation, Finch-Hatton, then pray let it be conducted in a civilised manner — over a quantity of bread and butter.”
“I thought you must be concealed behind the drapes,” Mr. Emilious replied companionably. “It was either yourself or a very large rat, that persisted in knocking against the windowpanes whilst we were engaged in rummaging about your desk. Where, by the by, have you hidden Mrs. Grey's letters?”
Neddie turned without a word and strode down the back passage towards the kitchens. Mr. Emilious held out his hand in a gesture of gallantry; and after a moment's hesitation, the rest of us deigned to follow.
Chapter 20
Policies of Love and War
Monday, 26 August 1805,
near dawn
“I SUPPOSE,” MR. EMILIOUS FINCH-HATTON BEGAN, AS he helped himself to some of Cook's excellent currant jam, “you are wild to know how I come into this tangled business.”
“You flatter yourself, sir,” Neddie replied. “For my part, I should be happy to learn so litde as the manner of Mrs. Grey's death. Your own machinations are immaterial.”
“I should like to know any number of things,” I broke in, “and am not averse to hearing Mr. Finch-Hatton. I rather think we shall come to the matter of Mrs. Grey, in time.”
“Excellent woman!” Mr. Emilious cried. “Lord Harold has assuredly judged you aright.”
“Am I to conclude, then, that Lord Harold is aware of his friend's involvement in an affair of murder?”
“He warned me against you, you know,” Mr. Emilious said by way of answer. “He thought you likely to be my worst enemy, my dear Miss Austen. I endeavoured to make you my friend — but alas, events moved well beyond my ordering of them, with the discovery of those letters. Mr. Grey happened upon the correspondence, I suppose?”
“He did,” Neddie supplied.
Mr. Emilious leaned forward in some excitement, to the detriment of his shirtsleeves, which were smeared with butter. “Did he tell you where he discovered them? For upon my word, the fellows I had hoped might effect it, were quite pitiful in the application!”
“Mr. Bridges and Captain Woodford?” I surmised.
“The very same. I led those two excellent fellows to believe it a matter of some delicacy, that should compromise the lady's reputation before her husband. Woodford agreed in an instant, from concern for his friend Grey; Mr. Bridges, quite naturally, had other motives. He accepted the task for a small consideration. A man whose circumstances are so thoroughly embarrassed, must be open to almost any application. But I believe the two had a falling-out, over the question of the letters' whereabouts; each suspected the other's motives.”
“You are not a man to soil your own hands, I perceive.”
“It was hardly a question of that, Miss Austen, but one rather of efficiency. It would have looked too odd for So they to return to the house, you know, and I had never been an intimate there — but I am getting ahead of myself. Where were the letters discovered?”
“You shall have to enquire of Mr. Grey yourself,” Neddie replied, “for he did not think to tell me. That is, if you possess sufficient courage to meet with Mr. Grey.”
The older man shook his head sadly over his hunk of bread. “I assure you, Mr. Austen, that you have completely misjudged me. I had nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs. Grey's end; except, perhaps, in the precipitation of it. I was never so fortunate as to meet the lady.”
“Tho' you learned much of her, from your associate Mr. Sothey,” I supplied. “You had encountered him before, at George Canning's; perhaps he came to you in some distress, once he knew that he had fallen into the woman's power, and was being employed for her own devious purposes.”
“I, employed by Mrs. Grey?” Mr. Sothey interjected with a bitter laugh. “I fear, Miss Austen, that you have got it the wrong way round.”
I looked from the improver to Mr. Emilious, much struck. “You would mean to say, Mr. Sothey, that you went to The Larches nearly seven months ago, for the express purpose of observing Mrs. Grey?”
“It was for that Mr. Canning ensured my introduction to Grey. I was peculiarly suited to the task, Miss Austen, in being an improver of landscape; Mr. Grey, as you know, has a passion for his grounds, and as a result of his recent marriage, was determined to spend much of his time in Kent. Canning — who, in his capacity as Treasurer of the Navy, is charged with the administration of the Government's Secret Funds — had long suspected the nature of Grey's marriage.[58] He believed the lady's family intended to use its influence with Grey to the detriment of the Kingdom's fortunes. You may well enquire how he came to believe this; let it suffice to say that Canning is familiar with the Comte de Penfleur these many years.”
“And so he sent you, Mr. Sothey, to spy on the Grey household.”
Anne Sharpe moaned softly, and covered her face with her hands. Mr. Sothey's countenance wore a fleeting look of pain; but he kept his eyes averted from his beloved. “He did. I had been in the employ of Mr. Canning for some time — ever since the end of peace had enforced my return from the Continent.[59] My reputation ensured my acceptance among the households of the Great; I was thus in a position to go anywhere, and see everyone. My work, I may say, has proved invaluable to Canning and his clandestine office.”
“Then at Weymouth—” Anne Sharpe began, with a desperate look.
“—at Weymouth I was charged with the cultivation of General Sir Thomas Porterman,” he concluded. “I was not charged with making love to his ward — of that you may be certain. It is to my own detriment, and that of my Government, that I have come to care for Miss Anne Sharpe so deeply; but I begin to think the difficulty will resolve itself, with time.” The bitterness had only deepened in Mr. Sothey's voice; he certainly believed the governess was lost to him.
58
The Secret Funds were monies voted annually by Parliament, and set aside for the government's use. No public inquiry as to their disposition was allowed; and while they were commonly used during the Napoleonic Wars for the payment of spies and the active sabotage of Bonaparte's government, in past eras the Secret Funds had defrayed the debts of royal mistresses, or purchased votes in corrupt parliamentary elections. —
59
Sothey is presumably speaking of the period around May 1803, when the Treaty of Amiens between England and France was broken. —