“Of course not,” Sothey replied. “I walked back to the race grounds. To admit my valet to an intimate knowledge of my affairs should place me in the man's power; and that is not how an agent of George Canning's survives.”
“Nor, it would seem, does he survive by placing himself in a woman's power; but that, we may suppose, you could not help. I comprehend it all, Mr. Sothey, except for one thing — why did you choose to implicate Denys Collingforth?”
“I had lived long enough at The Larches to believe Collingforth capable of anything, Miss Austen. He was a man driven by his passion for gaming, and by the pressures his resultant debts exacted; little as he loved Mrs. Grey, he was completely in her power, and should be the obvious instrument of revenge against her husband. I could not allow their conference to take place.”
“And, too, Collingforth's chaise was one of the few bereft of an attendant party,” I mused. “Not so much as a groom was left to look after the horses. Yes, I see perfectly how it was. A fearful symmetry must dictate your choice.”
“I never believed he would be charged with murder,” Sothey protested. “The man might name an hundred witnesses to his conduct that day, and all of them at some distance from his chaise. I thought him in the clear.”
“Until my brother discovered his message in Mrs. Grey's habit.”
“I had no notion she would keep it about her.”
I studied him keenly. “So you wrote that summons yourself?”
He bowed his head. “I had seen Collingforth's hand a score of times — he was forever sending little missives, in acceptance of Mrs. Grey's card-parties. It was a simple matter for an artist to affect his hand.”
“So simple, in fact, that even his wife was fooled. How unfortunate for Mr. Collingforth! Besieged on every side, he bolted from town, rather than face the coroner— and thus fell a second victim to your schemes. But why weight his body and throw him in the millpond? Should you not have been better served by an appearance of suicide, and a note to that effect, scrawled in his handwriting?”
Sothey's eyes widened. 'You cannot believe that I murdered Collingforth! — An innocent man! I was never more miserable than when I learned the result of the inquest, and never more relieved than when I was told that he had fled. I thought it a benediction of Heaven, that one man at least might escape the fate of the condemned.”
“And when you learned of his murder?”
Sothey threw his hands skyward in a gesture of utter helplessness, then let them fall without a word.
The improver's protest had the ring of truth; but in such a case, who knew what might be believed? A jury of his peers should dismiss his claim without a second thought. The murder of Mrs. Grey would prove him capable of every infamy. And yet, what had he effected, against an avowed spy of the enemy, but a simple act of war? It was to Sothey, perhaps, that we owed the unsullied peace of the Kentish night, and the broken camps along the Channel. Such tangles were beyond my power of resolution; I knew only that I recoiled from the hand that could murder a woman from cold-blooded calculation, when I should not think twice about the death of an enemy soldier, in the heat of battle. There was a hypocrisy in this, that was hardly comfortable; and I read a similar confusion in my brother's eyes.
“If you have quite done,” Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton said, “I believe that Sothey and I should take our leave.”
He had risen from his seat, and withdrawn a duelling pistol from his coat; it was a lovely thing, of highly-polished wood, and silver handle. But the ball in its depths should suffice for only one, before Finch-Hatton must reload; and in recognition of this, he had trained the piece upon my brother.
“I suggest you place the knife upon the table, Austen, where I might see it.”
It was brilliantly done; had Finch-Hatton chosen to fix upon Anne Sharpe, he could not depend upon Sothey — on myself, and he should risk Neddie's heroics. As it was, my brother stood in all the horror of our regard — and considered, I suppose, of his nine children. He hesitated, glanced beseechingly at me, and then laid the knife in the middle of the worn oak.
“I regret the necessity of such brutal persuasion,” Mr. Emilious said sadly, “but dawn approaches, and Sothey's road is a long one. Pray make our excuses to your bewitching wife, Mr. Austen, and assure her that we bear her no ill-will for the nature of this flight. The extended tour of the grounds, I fear, must be deferred for another time.”
“There are many forms of justice, Finch-Hatton,” Neddie replied carefully, “and Sothey's shall find him. Of your own fate, I confess, I am less sanguine; you have the peculiar ability to remain always on the fringe of the field, an observer of the fray, or perhaps its truest instigator. Such men invariably live long and interesting lives; whether their reputations survive them, is another question. And now, pray get out, before I find a foolish courage, and take your ball in pursuit of the bubble reputation.”
Finch-Hatton shook his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Pray allow Mr. Sothey to bind you to your chair, Mr. Austen — and the ladies also — lest you hound us on horseback the length of England. We require several hours, I should think, for the effecting of this flight; and we cannot waste a moment. In a very little while, I assume, your cook will be about the matter of breakfast.”
And so it was done: Finch-Hatton remained to train his pistol on Neddie, while Sothey fetched some twine from the stillroom; we were bound into our chairs as tightly as knots could hold us, and left with the unpleasant sensation of pigs trussed for the slaughter. Only Anne Sharpe appeared too remote for sensation; she was very nearly in a swoon.
“Anne,” Sothey said desperately, as he knelt before her chair, “will not you throw up everything, and come with me?”
She turned from him with such an expression of horror, that his countenance went white. “Can every tender feeling be denied me? Can not you understand what I have effected for my King, my country? — Indeed, Anne, for the love of such an one as you?”
“Do not attempt to claim that you strangled Mrs. Grey out of love for me,” she retorted bitterly. “I have never understood what you are. From the first moment of our meeting, I pledged my heart to a creature of my own invention; and I reap nothing now but my just reward.”
He would have touched her then, but she shrank away; and in utter silence, he bound her hands.
“Where shall you go?” I enquired, as he came to me.
He merely shook his head. “Mr. Canning, I must believe, will have some use for a desperate man. There are any number of noisome holes throughout the world, where such an one might be hidden — and so die.”
When he bent to tie my wrists, I caught his fingers in mine. “Do not give way entirely to despair, Mr. Sothey. If these hands have shed some blood, they have also been the instruments of a remarkable beauty. In your art I glimpsed a little of Paradise; but there cannot be a garden without a serpent or two. I shall not soon forget the beauty of your works, or the genius I have glimpsed.”
“My genius, Miss Austen, is akin to Lucifer's; and I fear that he was cast out from Heaven.”
“There is something of the demon and the angel in all of us, Mr. Sothey,” I replied, “and I know that your angel shall prevail. Let that hope be your guide — the beacon in your darkness — that redemption, and atonement, might come to you at last.”
The knots tied, he bowed low over my coupled wrists and kissed the back of my hand. Then, his eyes averted from Anne Sharpe, he quitted the room without another word.