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Chapter 12
The Devil in the Cards
6 July 1809, cont.
As evening parties go, ours was more generally unequal in its composition than most. We were treated to Miss Be
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The young man who aspired to an earldom was the picture of easiness. Thrace could flirt with A
He had claimed my attention first by declaring, with affecting candour, that he had never before found an occasion to witness a coroner’s inquest — and had discovered the experience to be infinitely diverting.
“As a man raised for much of my life on the Continent,” Thrace explained to the table in general, “I am not so familiar as I should like with the conventions of English justice. To observe your yeoman class, displayed on a hard wooden bench and endeavouring to do their utmost in consideration of the Departed, was as instructive as a treatise on philosophy should be. I admired the succinctness and learning of Mr. Munro, the subtlety with which he asked his questions, and the respect with which he treated high and low alike.”
“I wonder,” the exquisite Mr. Hinton replied with a curl of his lip, “that you can reap so much benefit from so vulgar an episode. I could only endure the two hours I spent in the George, by resolving never to be found there again!”
Mr. Thrace smiled at the gentleman. “But perhaps, sir, you had not the peculiar interest I felt in the man’s demise. When I consider that had I left Middleton but five minutes earlier that evening, I might have saved the labourer’s life — or, heaven forbid! — met a similar fate at the hands of his murderer, I could not be otherwise than compelled by the coroner’s proceeding.”
A storm of questions greeted this pronouncement, with Mr. Thrace throwing up his hands in protest as the ladies all demanded that he explain himself.
“There is no mystery,” cried he. “I dined alone on Saturday with our excellent Middleton, Spence being absent from Sherborne St. John on a matter of business in Basingstoke, and Lady Imogen being as yet in London.”
“We sat in conversation so long,” Mr. Middleton added, “that it ca
“You noticed nothing untoward, sir, in your way back to Sherborne St. John?” Mr. Prowting asked keenly. “No mill in the roadway, as I believe these affairs are called among the sporting set?”
“My road did not lie in the direction of the pond, if indeed the poor man met his death in that place,” Thrace explained. “I set off at a canter in the direction of Alton, and thence towards Basingstoke, and achieved Stonings by three o’clock in the morning — my hunter, Rob Roy, being a devil to go, begging the ladies’ pardon.”
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“I am certain the stolen jewels are to blame for that unfortunate man’s death in your cottage, Miss Austen,” affirmed he with a gleam in his eye. “I might have offered the story to the coroner yesterday morning, but from a fear of putting myself forward in such a delicate proceeding.”
These words could not fail to alert Mr. Prowting’s attention; the magistrate was suddenly all interest. “Say your piece, man,” he instructed from his position opposite Henry. “If you know something that bears on the murder, you must disclose it to the Law!”
“Well—” Aware that the notice of the entire table was united in his person, Mr. Thrace inclined his head towards Lady Imogen. “I had the tale from your father, the Earl — who spent some years out in India as a young man, and heard the story at its source. It seems that a fabulous necklace was stolen at sabre point from one of the gallant French defenders so routed by Clive in that illustrious battle, which occurred in the last century, I believe.”
“Clive took Chandernagar from the French in 1757,” Major Spence supplied. “The battle secured Bengal for the English.”
“Exactly so,” Thrace returned. “The story, as the Earl told it to me, is that an English Lieutenant seized the fabled gems from a French defender at the fort’s capitulation, and brought them to England after much intrigue and bloodshed. They were later lost on the road — somewhere near Chawton, if you will credit it.”
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The Battle of Chandernagar refers to the English East India Company’s assault, under the direction of Robert Clive, of the French Compagnie des Indes Fort d’Orléans in Chandernagar, India, in 1757. At the cost of significant casualties among Royal Navy troops brought in to fight against the French, the British decisively established control of Bengal for commercial trading. — Editor’s note.