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

door!” The desperate man glanced with revulsion at Mrs. Grey's rigid countenance. She lay, partiy covered with a borrowed shawl, a few feet from my brother, as tho' resting under his protection. “Can not you fetch a surgeon, and close the woman's eyes? How she stares at us all! 'Tis hardly decent!”
    “Is there a surgeon present?” Neddie called harshly over the ring of faces.
    Muttering, and a jostling to the rear; then a short, round-faced man with a bald pate appeared, bowing to left and right. “Tobias Wood,” he said, “at your service, Mr. Justice, sir.”
    “Very well, Mr. Wood. We shall require your assistance by and by, in removing the corpse to Canterbury. Perhaps for the present, it would suffice to close her eyes.”
    This Mr. Wood did, with a gendeness of purpose that must relieve the hearts of many.
    “Madam,” my brother said to his wife with punctilious courtesy, “you have said that you observed Mrs. Grey to enter Mr. Collingforth's chaise just before the final heat. That would be—” He consulted his watch, and glanced at Henry.
    “—sometime before two o'clock,” Henry supplied. “I recollect the hour, because it was the Commodore's last race.”
    “I should put Mrs. Grey's approach to the carriage rather closer to half-past one,” Lizzy said clearly. “But you know it makes no odds, Neddie, because Mrs. Grey was certainly alive when the heat was run. We all saw her riding her black at the head of the pack, and afterwards she drove her phaeton out of the grounds. I merely raised the point because Mr. Collingforth seems to have forgot the earlier visit.”
    “I know nothing of any visit!” he shouted; and a vein in his neck pulsed dangerously. One of his captors lost his grip on the man, and Lizzy stepped backwards as the right arm swung free.
    “I perfecdy apprehend your reasons for raising the point,” Neddie said politely to his wife, as tho' he presided over a ruling in a parlour game. “Did Mrs. Grey knock upon the chaise's door?”
    “She did. It opened immediately to admit her.”
    “So there was someone within?”
    “I must assume so. I did not glimpse the face.”
    “Miss Austen?” Neddie enquired formally of me.
    I shook my head in the negative.
    “Mr. Collingforth,” he continued, “what of the boy you engaged to stand watch over the carriage?”
    “Ran off to spend his coin, I must suppose. Such things have occurred before.”
    “Will the young man engaged by Mr. Collingforth come forward now and tell his story?” Neddie cried.
    This time, there was no movement to the rear of the crowd. Neddie repeated his words, to no avail; and Collingforth looked blackly at his friend Everett. The lat-ter's countenance was as contemptuous as before.
    Neddie mopped his reddening brow with a square of lawn and turned once more to the unfortunate gentleman. “Can you offer any explanation for Mrs. Grey's visit to your carriage, Collingforth?”
    “I cannot. And as your good lady says, Mr. Justice, it makes no odds. The jade lived to win her race, and carry her plate from the field. How she came to end up here, and in such a state, I cannot say. But I suggest you enquire of the parson, Mr. Bridges, and his fine military friend. Ask them why they might have wanted the French trollop dead, and I'm sure you'll hear an earful.”
    Beside me, Lizzy's fingers clenched about the pearl handle of her parasol, and her green eyes drifted languidly over the assembled faces. Searching for her brother, perhaps, with the barest hint of anxiety.
    'You have a marked proclivity for abuse, Collingforth, that you would do well to suppress,” Neddie said warningly. “The lady is Mrs. Grey , whatever your opinion of her; and I would request that you show some respect of the dead.”
    Collingforth shot a look full of hatred at the corpse, and I shuddered to observe it. However Mrs. Grey had charmed the gentlemen of Kent, this one had not been among their number.
    “Did you invite her to the