Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

fired upon him?”
    “They did not fire upon him,” Edward declared. “They fired upon a covey of pheasant—and bagged five birds. I shall make a thorough examination of the fowling pieces, and await Dr. Bredloe’s expert opinion, naturally—but I should think this man has been dead for hours. Would not you agree, Jane?”
    “Entirely. I should be interested to learn the doctor’s opinion as to the approximate hour of death, however—the night air in autumn is chill, but the ground still retains some warmth; that variance must affect the degree of stiffening we have observed.”
    “Good God!” Mr. Moore exclaimed, with all the outrage of a man confounded by a female’s brazen disregard for decorum; “are you actually
suggesting
that this man was … was …”
    “Murdered? I am, sir.”
    The clergyman shot me one appalled glance, then strode quickly towards the body.
    There was a brief silence, punctuated by Mr. Moore’s shallow breathing; Edward raised one amused eyebrow in my direction, and shrugged slightly. Then the clergyman said, in a voice quite raw with suppressed emotion, “You have summoned Bredloe? He is even now making for Godmersham?”
    “I hope so, indeed.”
    Mr. Moore swung around and stared at Edward, his pallor ghastly. “Idiot! You had better have thrown the corpse in the Stour, and allowed some other to find it!”
    “What wild talking is this?” Edward exclaimed, astonished.
    “You do
understand
that this is no pilgrim lying dead in your house? You
apprehend
the disaster that is about to break about all our heads?”
    I stared at my brother in bewilderment, and read an equal incomprehension in his countenance.
    “What can you possibly mean, sir?” I attempted.
    Mr. Moore swept his hands wide in a gesture of despair; out of habit, perhaps, they formed a benediction over the dead man’s chest. “You see before you the corpse of a prodigal son returned—and at how
ill
an hour. I do not know what may be said to Adelaide. Or how the intelligence is to be conveyed to her. When she learns—”
    “You would refer to Mrs. MacCallister?” I asked.
    “I would.” But Mr. Moore was not attending to me; his gaze was all for Edward—the First Magistrate of Canterbury. “This man is none other than Curzon Fiske, whom his wife believed dead long since.”
    “—And on the strength of that belief,” my brother said slowly, “was yesterday married to another.”
    We were none of us required to utter the hateful word
bigamy
aloud; it jangled unspoken in all our minds.
    1 Mr. Moore proves prescient here. George Finch-Hatton (1791–1858), the Jupiter of this account, did indeed succeed his cousin as 10th Earl of Winchilsea in 1826. He has gone down in history for having fought a duel with the Duke of Wellington, who was then Prime Minister, over Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Jupiter opposed it. —
Editor’s note
.

   CHAPTER FIVE   
     

A Pact of Silence
     
    Success—as clerics say, all things have their time—
    G EOFFREY C HAUCER, “T HE M ERCHANT’S T ALE ”
     
    21 O CTOBER 1813, CONT .

    “B Y ALL THAT’S HOLY, ” E DWARD SAID SOFTLY AS HE STUDIED the corpse’s features, “you have the right of it, Moore. Curzon Fiske! The beard and whiskers deceived me—not to mention the humble mode of dress and the excessive tanning of the skin, which should not be unnatural in one only lately returned from the Indies. I should never have known him, however, but for your better knowledge of the man.”
    Mr. Moore visibly recoiled. “We were acquainted well enough when we were boys, to be sure,” he said. “I do not think there is more than a twelvemonth’s difference in our ages, indeed, and our fathers were friends of long standing. But in later years, our ways lay much apart.”
    “—Once Fiske won the hand of Adelaide Thane, you would mean.” My brother met the clergyman’s gaze with a level look. There had been just that suggestion in HarriotMoore’s teazing last