Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

shuddered as with a dreadful presentiment (as might betray an enthusiast of horrid novels), but turned her soft blue eyes upon her governess and said, “Poor Sharpie. I know you have not the stomach for such things—you were taken quite ill when Caky killed a rat once in the nursery. 1 But then, it did squeal most horribly under the poker and tongs, and you are a litde goose, are you not?” She patted Miss Sharpe's hand. “I cannot think that Mrs. Grey, however dead, was the sort to squeal. And do consider, Sharpie, that my father must presendy relieve our fears.”
    Miss Sharpe kissed Fanny's flushed cheek, and very sensibly produced her chapbook, a serviceable volume in which she has been collecting riddles throughout the summer. The scheme was devised entirely for Fanny's amusement; and in a very litde while the two were lost in a familiar exchange, and the danger of hysterics was safely past.
    A cicada's trill burst wildly from the copse at the meeting-grounds' fringe—a sudden, sharp keening— and the heat, at the moment, was as oppressive as a lap robe.
    “Pray look after the child, Miss Sharpe,” Lizzy said abrupdy. “Jane and I must speak to Mr. Austen.” And with a word to one of the liveried footmen, who had been staring impassively into the middle distance all this while, she was assisted out of the barouche. Immediately I followed.
    A knot of men, high-born and low, had gathered tighdy around my brothers and the Collingforth chaise. With a tap of her parasol on a broad shoulder, Lizzy won her way to the centre, where Denys Collingforth was held firmly in the grip of two of his neighbours.
    “I tell you, I know nothing!” he spat out. “The jade would no more speak to me this morning than she'd look at a cur in the mud. Too fine for Denys Collingforth, and not above saying it to the world. I never came near her, nor she near me!”
    “Then how do you explain, Mr. Collingforth, that she entered your chaise just prior to the final heat?” Lizzy broke in smoothly. “My sister and I observed it ourselves.”
    The gentleman's mouth fell open, and the colour drained from his face. “Impossible!” he cried. “I was absent from the blasted carriage the better part of the day! Everett will vouch for me—and an hundred others!”
    “Where is Mr. Everett?” Neddie cried, with a look of interest for his wife.
    The stranger dressed in black, who had supported Collingforth in his dispute with Mr. Bridges, shouldered his way through the crowd. “I am Joshua Everett.”
    “Are you acquainted with this man?”
    “I am. He is Denys Collingforth, of Prior's Farm.”
    “And did you bear him company at any time this morning?”
    “For the entirety of it, sir. We breakfasted at eight, drove out to the meeting-grounds and secured our place, and left a boy to look after the horses.”
    “That would have been at what hour?” Neddie pressed.
    Mr. Everett shrugged, and looked to Collingforth for corroboration. “Ten, perhaps?”
    “Half-past. You forget the tankard of ale we drank along the road.”
    “Half-past,” Neddie said, as tho' he possessed a mental ledger of Collingforth's doings. “And then, Mr. Everett?”
    “Then we walked about the grounds, gave a look to the horses, placed some bets with a few gentlemen among our acquaintance—and took up a position near the cocking ring.”
    “I saw them there,” a voice called from the crowd.
    “And I,” said another.
    Neddie nodded swiftiy at my brother Henry, who went in search of Collingforth's acquaintance.
    “All that would have been prior to the heats themselves, Collingforth.”
    'Yes. I watched those at the rail.”
    “Your wife did not accompany you this morning?”
    “Mrs. Collingforth is indisposed. And with Everett up from Town—”
    “I see. And so you insist that there was no one within the chaise when this lady observed Mrs. Grey to enter it?”
    “I tell you, Austen, I never returned to the coach until the moment I pulled open this