The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Read online

  “Only by your intemperate behaviour, Lydia. How can you expect to be believed when you accuse Fitz of murder and call him names even the most depraved of women would not? I cannot credit these allegations about Miss Maplethorpe—or Mr. Skinner!—because you look so well cared for—cared for properly for many days. No, I do not believe you, Lydia.”

  By the time that Elizabeth had finished speaking, Lydia was in floods of noisy tears.

  “Come, dearest, weeping won’t help,” said Jane, hugging her. “Let us ring the bell. A cup of tea will do you more good than all the wine in creation. You grieve for George, we know that.”

  The comprehensive look Miss Maplethorpe gave Lydia when she came in spoke volumes. “Oh, dear! Has Mrs. Wickham been trying to tell you that there are bars over the windows?”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth.

  “A part of her delusory state, Mrs. Darcy.”

  “She says you keep a house of ill fame in Sheffield,” said Jane.

  That made Miss Maplethorpe laugh. “How did she ever get that into her head, I wonder?”

  “She says she overheard a conversation between you and Mr. Edward Skinner.” Jane sounded so aggressive that Elizabeth was startled.

  “How extraordinary! I’ve met Mr. Skinner only once, when he brought Mrs. Wickham to Hemmings.”

  “Where did you live before you came to Hemmings? What kind of work did you do?” Jane asked with rare persistence.

  “I administered the women’s Bedlam on Broadmoor, then I cared for a relative of the Marquess of Ripon,” said Miss Maplethorpe. “I came with glowing recommendations, Mrs. Bingley.”

  “A women’s Bedlam? I thought men and women were cared for in the same institution,” said Jane, apparently unimpressed by the glowing recommendations.

  “That is so,” said Miss Maplethorpe, looking a little harried, “but it is still necessary to have a supervisor for the women.”

  “I didn’t know there was a Bedlam on Broadmoor,” said Jane.

  “Indeed there is! There is also a Marquess of Ripon,” said Miss Maplethorpe tartly.

  “One reads in the letters of Argus that mad people in a Bedlam are shockingly mistreated,” said Jane. “Like animals in a menagerie, only worse. Sightseers pay a penny to tease and torment them, and the staff resort to torture.”

  “Which is why I left Broadmoor to go first to the Marquess, whose relative died, and then to come here.” Miss Maplethorpe’s face had gone to flint. “And that is all I have to say, Mrs. Bingley. If you have further complaints, I would appreciate it if you addressed them to my employer, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Thank you. Might we have some tea?” Elizabeth said hastily. She took Miss Maplethorpe to one side. “I have a question too, Miss Maplethorpe. Is Mrs. Wickham’s mind permanently deranged?”

  “It is too early to tell. I trust not.”

  “But if it is, what kind of care will she need?”

  “The kind she receives now at Hemmings, but, alas, those bars would have to become a reality. It appears that she is—er—very fond of the company of gentlemen. I have already had to persuade her to return home on several occasions. If this is a new sort of symptom, I am sorry to have to tell you of it, Mrs. Darcy.”

  “Pray don’t think it comes as a shock,” Elizabeth said. “She has ever been so.”

  “I see.”

  “She says she isn’t drinking very much.”

  “That is true. She has improved.”

  “Thank you!”

  Casting Miss Maplethorpe a speaking glance, Elizabeth returned to Jane and Lydia, whose tears had ceased.

  Though by nature she was shallow, wild—and self-centered, apart from her devotion to the late Captain George Wickham—Lydia had sufficient intelligence to understand that she had boxed herself into a corner. The one thing she had not counted upon was the silent removal of the bars; in their absence she could see that her own conduct did not predispose Jane and Lizzie to believe her tale. Resolving to keep sober had improved her outward appearance—and her underlying health—so much that she did not look the victim of an abduction. Quite the opposite. And tears, she soon saw, would not benefit her. Her plans to be freed must now depend upon her own actions; neither Lizzie nor Jane would support her, let alone conspire to spirit her away from Hemmings. Therefore no more tears, no more references to abductions, imprisonment, or Ned Skinner.

  Though it was not the tea hour, Miss Maplethorpe sent in an excellent tea to which all three sisters applied themselves with enthusiasm. Lydia chatted away quite brightly, allaying what fears Jane and Elizabeth still felt. Fancy Jane flying at Mirry the Moo! But it had not lasted, of course. Jane always believed the best of people, even if they were standing on the gallows.

  Since she knew nothing of Mary’s disappearance from Ned Skinner’s custody, Lydia concentrated upon that subject.

  “At first I thought she would simply appear after indulging in a fit of abstraction,” said Jane.

  “She was prone to those,” said Lydia. “Always had her head in a book and desperate for access to bigger libraries.”

  “But it is now four weeks since she vanished,” Elizabeth said, “and I for one no longer think there is anything voluntary about her absence. Fitz agrees. He has managed to have two-thirds of each shire’s constables put to searching for her, and the advertisement has circulated from one end of England to the other. With a hundred pounds reward. Many people have lodged information, but none has led, even remotely, to Mary.” Her face had gone very stern. “We begin to fear now that she is dead. Fitz is convinced of it.”

  “Lizzie, no!” Lydia cried, taken out of her own troubles.

  Elizabeth sighed. “I still hope,” she said.

  “And I,” said Lydia. “Mary could give lessons in stubbornness to a mule. What worries me is leaving the search to the constabulary—Jane, Lizzie, they’re bumbling fools!”

  “We agree,” said Jane. “For that reason, Lizzie and I tend to make Fitz’s life a misery. Though Charlie and Angus still go out every day.”

  “Angus?” said Lydia.

  “Angus Sinclair, publisher of the Westminster Chronicle. Lizzie says he is in love with Mary.”

  “Jane, no! Truly?”

  The ladies remained another hour, then left in plenty of time to reach Bingley Hall by sunset; Elizabeth was staying there that night, and looking forward to seeing the boys, if not Prissy.

  “What do you think about Lydia?” Jane asked as the chaise negotiated a particularly bad section of road.

  “I’m puzzled. She looks very much better for her weeks at Hemmings. I didn’t think her deranged.”

  “Despite the bars.”

  “Yes. But what puzzles me most, Jane, was your attack on Miss Maplethorpe. So unlike you!”

  “It was the look she gave Lydia when she first came in,” Jane said. “You were seated at more of an angle than I, so it’s possible that your interpretation of the look wasn’t the same as mine. What I saw was derision and contempt.”

  “How extraordinary!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Her manners were all that might be expected, Jane. Very ladylike.”

  “I am convinced it is an act, Lizzie. Nor do I believe that she ever saw a Bedlam.” Jane laughed. “Mirry the Moo! If that is not just like the old Lydia of Longbourn days!”

  “I’m sure that Matthew Spottiswoode and his York agency would have gone into Miss Maplethorpe’s background thoroughly.”

  “Then we must visit regularly, Lizzie.”

  When Elizabeth returned to Pemberley she did something she had never done before; she sent for Edward Skinner, who, said Parmenter, was at home.

  Their interview got off to a bad start, however, when it took Ned an hour to report. Elizabeth mentioned his tardiness, at her most imperious.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Darcy, but I was engaged in some manual labour when your summons arrived, and had to make myself respectable,” he said without a vestige of apology in his voice.

  “I see. What do you
know of Miss Mirabelle Maplethorpe?”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Wickham’s companion at Hemmings.”

  His brow cleared. “Oh, her! I only met her the once, and scarce recollect being given her name.”

  “In which case, you know very little of her?”

  “Nothing whatsoever, ma’am. Mr. Spottiswoode knows more.”

  “Then I shall apply to Mr. Spottiswoode.”

  “That would be best, ma’am.”

  “You’ve been at Pemberley longer than I have, so you must be aware it’s a hive of gossip. Have you heard any rumors about Miss Maplethorpe?”

  “Only that Mr. Spottiswoode was lucky to find her.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Skinner. You may go.”

  And I have not advanced a friendship there, thought Elizabeth. Why does Fitz esteem him so?

  She went in search of Matthew Spottiswoode, an easy business, as he never left his desk unless accompanied by a Darcy. Elizabeth was as fond of him as she was put off by Ned Skinner, and could not credit that he was guilty of any transgression in the matter of the hiring of Lydia’s companion. Only Jane’s peculiar reaction to the woman had spurred her to make enquiries, for Jane was the world’s least suspicious creature. Of course Elizabeth might have gone to Fitz, but he was her last possible resort. They could not meet these days, it seemed, without quarrelling, and, having been so shockingly insulted by Lydia, he would not welcome an older sister’s questions. Lydia was also costing him a great deal of money.

  “Matthew,” she said, entering the steward’s office, “tell me what you know about Miss Mirabelle Maplethorpe.”

  A man in his late fifties, Matthew Spottiswoode had spent his entire life in service to a Darcy of Pemberley. First, Fitz’s father as an under-steward, and then Fitz as an under-steward followed by elevation to the stewardship itself. His education was somewhat lacking, yet eminently suited to his profession, as he was brilliant at arithmetic, wrote a literate letter in a copperplate hand, kept impeccable books, and had the sort of brain that stored away facts which he could trot out at a moment’s notice. He was a happily married man who lived on the estate and had the felicity of seeing all his children in service to Pemberley.

  “The lady who is caring for Mrs. Wickham?” Mr. Spottiswoode asked now, having no trouble identifying her.

  “The very same. Mr. Skinner sent me to you.”

  “Yes, I hired her through the employment agency for ladies in York that I am accustomed to use—Miss Scrimpton’s.” He looked at his mistress shrewdly. “It was a very hasty business, but I was singularly fortunate, Mrs. Darcy. The agency had just that moment accepted Miss Maplethorpe as employable. Since Mr. Darcy was very anxious that Mrs. Wickham be settled at Hemmings immediately, I went through Miss Maplethorpe’s recommendations, and found them so suited to our needs that I did not bother to look farther afield. Miss Scrimpton had no other lady on her lists even remotely suitable.”

  “Kindly tell me about her recommendations, Matthew.”

  “Well, she had letters from persons such as Sir Peter Oersted, Viscount Hansbury, Mrs. Bassington-Smyth and Lord Summerton. Her two actual employers were first—for many years—the Bedlam on Broadmoor, where she supervised the female inmates and their nurses. A very glowing document! Her second place was in eastern Yorkshire, caring for a relative of the Marquess of Ripon. This patient, a lady, had just died. The persons who gave her personal letters of recommendation had all suffered a relative in the Bedlam.” He coughed apologetically. “You understand, Mrs. Darcy, that those having insane relatives are peculiarly sensitive about the fact. I did not feel it politic to bother them, as their letters were all genuine, I do assure you.”

  “I see. Thank you, Matthew.”

  Well, that was that. Miss Maplethorpe was cleared of all suspicion. Jane must have imagined the look—or, more likely, Lydia had been insufferably rude to her companion, and not endeared herself.

  The noise of merriment from the schoolroom made her smile; she opened its door to find Owen having tea with the girls, and wondered if he had succumbed to the charms of Georgie. But if he had, she decided later, he was concealing it well enough to be called crafty, and she did not think him crafty. The real reason behind the visits, she realised, was pity. Well, something had to be done, no matter what Fitz said! Owen may not be in danger of falling in love, but her girls were so inexperienced that she could not say the same for them. Susie positively melted when Owen looked at her, and Anne was not much better.

  Ned Skinner left the house a worried man. What on earth had pushed Elizabeth Darcy to make enquiries about Mirry? Not anything Lydia could have told her, and the job on the bars had been excellent. The workmen had quietly replaced every brick with a hole in it.

  The bars would have to remain off, a shame. Mrs. Darcy and Mrs. Bingley would visit Lydia often, and Lydia, Mirry had informed him in a wrathful note brought by courier, was pretending to be drunk! That indicated that she was not at all dependent upon the bottle, the scheming little hussy!

  What could be done about Lydia? As far as Ned was concerned, only one fact mattered: that she was out to ruin Fitz’s public career. She had said it, and she meant it. But it could not be allowed to happen, no matter how drastic the solution might have to be.

  Of course Fitz and Spottiswoode were unaware of Mirry’s true identity. Men like Fitz, Ned knew painfully well, were too exalted to understand how some aspects of the world functioned. His own function was to shield Fitz from all things beneath his notice, and when Fitz—in a tearing hurry—not like him at all—decided Lydia had to have a companion, Ned had known how to engineer the choice. A true lady’s companion, Ned knew (though Fitz did not), would never be able to restrain a tartar like Lydia.

  The woman Ned had in mind was Miriam Matcham, who ran a brothel in Sheffield that he had known from birth. Though she informed him that she could give him only a few months, she was paid more than her brothel duties earned her in a year. She put him in touch with a man who could forge all manner of documents, and together they invented a history for Mirry. Broadmoor was wild and remote, why shouldn’t it have a Bedlam? And who in Derbyshire would know whether it did, or didn’t?

  Now Mrs. Darcy, of all people, was asking questions! Poking her nose where it didn’t belong. As if Lydia herself were not enough of a problem! Cunning as a fox, unscrupulous and immoral, without the steel of a Mirry or the brain of an Elizabeth Darcy.

  He went to Hemmings to find out what exactly was going on, a long ride that instinct told him not to break by staying at an inn, though he had not, as yet, put together the pieces of a murderous jigsaw in his mind. He slept for some hours in a field where Jupiter could graze, then went on. And for every mile of the way his mind dwelled on Lydia, how to solve the terrible problem she had become. If she could stop drinking at will, then she was very dangerous, could not be shut up the way Mrs. Bennet had been, in a delicious haze of comfort and cronies. His thoughts continued to skirt around the ultimate alternative, but by the time he reached Hemmings the pieces made an appalling sense, and he was convinced it was the only alternative. Remained but when, and how.

  “Oh, Ned, I am so glad to see you!” Miss Maplethorpe cried when he slid into the house through the back door, having left Jupiter in a grove of trees with a loosened girth, a horse blanket against the dewy chills, and sweet grass to tear at.

  “Is she, or is she not, permanently drunk?” he asked in the kitchen, with no ears listening.

  “As far as I can tell, she’s more often sober than drunk, but she’s an actress would make a fortune on the stage. At the moment she’s sober and strutting around as if she owned this place. But what am I to do if she decides to go for a walk?”

  “Go with her, Mirry.”

  “And what do I do if she decides to drive into Leek? Or Stoke-on-Trent?”

  “Go with her. But that isn’t what you’re asking in truth, is it? You want to know if you can use force.”

  “Yes, I do.”
>
  When she deemed his silence overly long, she dug him in the ribs. “Well? Am I to use force, or not?”

  “Not. I don’t know what you did to make both her sisters smell a rat, but you did something. Lydia’s not some scragged moggie out of the gutter like your girls in Sheffield, Mirry. You should be walking on eggshells.”

  “Oh, shit! I knew it was too easy!”

  “So much money for too little work, you mean?”

  “Yes. Give me proper instructions, Ned, or whistle for your lady’s companion. Then see what happens! Your fine madam will be in some fellow’s bed quick as lightning! You know how I keep her at Hemmings. My—er—helpers are nigh exhausted servicing the bitch.”

  “Well, that’s why you brought them, after all. Instructions—let me see…If the little hussy goes out in the carriage, you go with her. If she walks, you walk with her. And feed your fellows Spanish fly or whatever else they need to keep on fucking her.” He began pulling on his gloves, so big that they had to be specially made for him. “Only remember that all it will take to bring you down is one enquiry to the Marquess of Ripon.”

  “I don’t give a bugger about the Marquess of Ripon! Remember, my name’s not Mirabelle Maplethorpe.”

  “Perhaps the informant would have something to say about Miss Miriam Matcham.”

  “I wish you’d find someone else to do your dirty work, Ned!”

  He paused with his hand on the door, and laughed. “Be of good cheer, Mirry! I hear that even in New South Wales they have bawdy-houses. No, no, I’m teasing! You’re safe with Ned Skinner.”

  When he reached Jupiter he didn’t tighten the girth; he took the saddle off completely, changed the bridle for a halter and tied the horse so that it could move to graze but not emerge from the shelter of the trees, the bases of which were hidden from the house by a tall hedge. Jupiter taken care of, Ned lay at full length and dozed for a while. He came awake in a trice; there was noise from the house, men coming and going as if hurried.