Midnight in Austenland
Page 39

Now I will write the truth of that night, and pray to God that he take me home soon so I can rest. For some time the abbess had been doing poorly. Her hands shook, and her thoughts often muddled. That night she made the tea for supper, and, wishing to brighten the sisters’ spirits, made it extra sweet with honey. The exertion tired her, and she took to rest. Poor abbess. She was mother to me, the kindest woman, a saint. I feared for her health and so was fasting that night in earnest prayer that she be made well.
The sisters sat to eat. I, fasting, served them, pouring their tea after the meal.
When tea was drunk, we retired to the chapel for compline prayers. But before we could start, some of the sisters began to moan, clutching their bellies. One fell to the earth, then another. I ran around, frantic, trying to help, but their faces convulsed horribly. Some screamed. In minutes, all lay dead. In confusion, I feared the Devil and his army were attacking and I hid beneath a pew, praying to the Almighty most fervently. Soon the abbess came in and saw the death. She fainted and I carried her to bed.
There was naught to be done. I laid out the bodies of my sisters and covered them in blankets. Come morn, I would go to the village and fetch help to bury the dead. In the meantime, I cleaned up the dishes from the last supper, thinking it was the only service I could offer my poor sisters. When I emptied the tea cauldron, I discovered something strange. The abbess had not boiled the usual dried herbs we had grown from our garden. I thought at first she had boiled fresh pine needles, as we sometimes did in winter, but the smell was wrong. Then I realized—the abbess in her confusion had mistaken the yew hedge for the pine trees. I have seen yew kill a horse. My dear sisters drank yew tea, well-sweetened.
I am consoled that the abbess will never know, and I pray God pardon her, for her heart was pure.
Miss Gardenside shut the book and looked around. “Well, I would like Mary Francis pleading for me at the final judgment.”
“Amen,” said Eddie.
Charlotte was silent, imagining Mary pacing in her room each night, haunted by the faces of the dying sisters.
Then Colonel Andrews began to laugh. He rocked back and forth, holding his knees. “Well done! Well done indeed. I say, what a right splendid way to end it all. I hereby declare the mystery solved!”
Miss Charming and Miss Gardenside hurrahed and clapped.
“Solved?” said Charlotte. “But what about the rest?”
“What rest?” the Colonel asked.
She sat beside him, speaking low so the others didn’t overhear. “The fake body on the second floor. Or was it just a hand? Was there more than the rubber glove? I already guessed it was supposed to be Mr. Wattlesbrook or Mrs. Hatchet.”
Colonel Andrews’s eyes widened. In amazement, no doubt! He hadn’t realized she’d gotten so far into the mystery on her own.
“They were the only main characters who disappeared,” she explained. “And mysteriously too. No one seems to have witnessed Mr. Wattlesbrook’s departure, and Miss Gardenside said she dismissed her nurse herself. It was the last night of the storm, and I looked around the next day. That’s when I found the tracks from Mr. Wattlesbrook’s—”
Car. She was about to say “car.” That was not a Regency word. That was an off-limits word.
Oh no. Oh dear. She’d gotten this so wrong. Colonel Andrews would never involve a car in his Regency mystery. He was a purist. What was she saying? This had nothing to do with Mary Francis.
“Never mind. I just … never mind. I was thinking about another story line.” She trailed off and joined the others, who were gathered around the tea trolley.
Eddie sniffed his cup. “Does this brew smell a bit yew-ish?”
That night, Charlotte lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Sometimes instinct isn’t fancy. Sometimes when you think you’ve touched a corpse’s hand, you actually have, and sometimes when you suspect there’s a murderer lurking in a big strange house, there really is, and you should figure out who it is before they come for you.
She tried to sleep, but the noise of her fears grated in her head, loud as a siren, and she might as well have been trying to sleep atop a wailing fire truck. She dozed when she could, just trying to make it till dawn. She didn’t dare venture out in the dark.
What do you think will happen? asked her Inner Thoughts. The bogeyman will bite you?
Basically I’m afraid of murder most foul, Charlotte answered.
Duh, people are killed at noon just as often as midnight, her Inner Thoughts replied.
Not helpful, Charlotte thought forcefully.
Well past midnight and between bouts of unconsciousness, Charlotte began to wonder if the house itself was the real assassin. It groused and soughed as if it had a voice and something to say. Perhaps someone had crossed the house, and it had seized the threat in its gullet and consumed it entirely. Charlotte had discovered the victim’s body mid-digestion, finding only a hand, and by morning the house had absorbed the rest.
“Nice house,” she said, patting the wall. “Good house. Charlotte is friend.”
It couldn’t hurt.
As soon as paleness filtered the black of the sky, Charlotte slipped on a robe, creaked her door open, and tiptoed to the second-floor secret room. She didn’t really believe that the house had killed someone and swallowed the body. Not now that it was morning, anyway.
Charlotte lifted the lid of the black Chinese vase again, just because it seemed like something that should hold a clue. But it was still empty. In the unfinished light of dawn, the stack of broken chairs did resemble a dragon, but that wasn’t particularly helpful. Even in her sleepy half-madness, Charlotte didn’t believe in dragons.
Charlotte sat on an abandoned settee, slumping in the absence of a corset. A body had lain right over there on the couch. She couldn’t talk herself out of it anymore. No way had she mistaken a glove for a fleshy dead hand.
To keep calm, she tried to reason it out logically.
1. Murderer approached victim. Lured up to this room? With intent to kill? Not likely. Must have been an unplanned crime or else a stupid criminal. The top floor of an occupied house was not an ideal location for a murder.
2. Victim killed in secret room, and body abandoned on sofa. Until more convenient time? Murderer lay velvet coverlet partially over the body. Possible sign of regret? Also a disregard for the value of a velvet coverlet.
3. Charlotte found body in room. The hand was cold, but she didn’t remember any stench, so most likely the body was fresh. (Ugh, what a horrible adjective to apply to a body, as if it were meat, which, she supposed, it kind of was.) Killed recently? Same week? Same day?