I'm leaving chapter 1 up as a taster, and taking the rest down as I am publishing - and Kindle asks for all other electronic copies to be removed from the web. Sorry about that, but on the other hand the Kindle version is buffed up and polished...
Chapter 1
Caleb Armitage always enjoyed watching his wife nursing her son, his stepson, before they ate their own breakfast in the little parlour that Mr and Mrs Weston had set aside for their use, but he was only paying scant attention this morning since he was frowning over a letter.
"This is the damndest thing" he said.
"What, my dear?" asked Jane, folding her bodice back into place and holding small Joseph up to wind him. "Sir Nathanial Conant wants you to cut short your leave?"
"No, though I should be back to work in the next few days" said Caleb. "No, it's from Chorleigh, Wright and Jekyll – why they feel they have to write to me, as though marriage has robbed you of the ability to manage your own affairs I don't know – but they received an offer to continue to rent the town house for the Little Season and took it upon their silly selves to accept in your name as 'obviously you would want the rents' as though I'm unable to keep you in anything but penury!" he added furiously.
"I think it's time to consider changing our business managers" said Jane. "So what are we to do? Our household is, I'm afraid, too large to consider squeezing into the three rooms of your little house, unless we spend all the rents we have accumulated to purchase somewhere else, either next to it to expand, or somewhere else entirely. We cannot presume on the hospitality of the Westons any longer and our honeymoon at Donwell is over."
"Mrs Armitage, it was a very fine honeymoon indeed" said Caleb. "I believe we became very well acquainted with most of the house and much of the grounds as we explored."
Jane flushed.
"Indeed I think we explored very thoroughly" she said, then became serious. "We shall have to consider deeply what to do; I had hoped to save the rent money but property is always an investment. Call Annie to take Joseph, I pray you, my love; we shall take breakfast and look at the papers and see what property there might be; and we will write to Mr John Knightley and ask him to put us in the way of another firm of solicitors. I find the high handed attitude of Messrs Chorleigh, Wright and Jekyll once again to be beyond the bounds of what is pleasing. And, if you please, Mr Armitage, you have not presented me with a matutinal salute."
Caleb, having called the nursemaid and handed over small Joseph, proceeded to make up for that with a thorough kissing that necessitated a slight delay to taking breakfast as both parties were somewhat mussed from the experience.
Jane turned to her own correspondence over breakfast and broke the wafer on a missive written with a feminine hand. She quickly scanned it for a signature.
"Oh, this is from Nessie – Agnes Fanshawe. She was at school with me, when Colonel Campbell so kindly paid for my education. She's a poor relation too, the last time I heard from her, she wrote that her cousin had offered her a position as a companion to his betrothed wife," she hesitated, "And a very hard position it was too, for she wrote that her Cousin Henry had determined to marry an Opera Dancer no less, and wanted her made into a lady."
Caleb whistled.
"Reckon she'd have her work cut out there, Jane-girl! What's wrong, she wants to run away and considers you a safe haven?"
"I don't know yet" said Jane. "The wretched woman has crossed and re-crossed her page and her hand is so agitated she might as well be writing that she needs safe haven indeed – yes, I fear Nessie is the sort to presume on an acquaintance to ask that sort of favour – or whether she reports that she has married a mulatto Pope. No, that cannot be it. Ah, I have it! it's not mulatto, it's murder. Some one has murdered Popham – her cousin Henry I believe – and she wants us to go immediately and do something about it."
"Strewth!" said Caleb. "Untangle a bit more, Jane-girl, and maybe it isn't murder any more than mulatto; but if it is I'll write to Sir Nathanial and ask if I can be officially assigned. I should think that asking you to help constitutes calling in Bow Street."
"It does" said Jane. "Really, though quite willing to lean on others, Nessie is quite astute when she puts her mind to it. She has already written to 'whom it may concern' at Bow Street to ask that her friend's clever husband should be assigned… now how is it that she has heard of you?" Jane frowned at the closely-written crossed sheet. "Ah, I see, she spent some time as a companion to Julia Redmayne who wrote to her all about what happened in Yorkshire, silly indiscreet creature that she is, and Nessie put two and two together. It is to be hoped that the letter she has sent to Bow Street will be read by Sir Nathanial, who will at least have some inkling who might be meant by 'my friend Jane Fairfax's husband'. How lowering for you, my dear, merely to be my caro sposo as you might say" she chuckled at him.
Caleb grimaced.
"I pray you not to recall to mind that besom, Jane-of-my-heart or I may find pressing duties elsewhere!" he said. Jane leaned over to kiss him.
"I would do almost anything to avoid turning into Augusta Elton" she said. "Well if we are to stay with Nessie and investigate her murder it means we will not have to worry for a while at least about presuming on the hospitality of the Westons; if Nessie wants our aid she must deal with having our nursery as well and our staff, for I will not leave my babies and Simmy."
Caleb grinned.
"I wonder if she will think the cure worse than the sickness?" he said.
"Caleb, my love, surely you do not regret taking on a ready made family?" Jane fluttered her eyelashes at him.
Caleb picked her up and sat her on his lap.
"The ready made family, no. Sometimes I feel right slumguzzled by the appurtenances of a lady's children though – I never expected to have servants, Jane-girl, and I fear to be looked on as a posturing fool for travelling with so many."
Jane laughed.
"Three maids, a governess, your man, and a tutor for our son are not what most households would consider many, my love. Even Isabella Knightley, who prides herself on her frugality, descends upon Hartfield with no less than half a dozen nursery maids and her own maid to boot. John Knightley, like his brother, does very well without a man, but then Fowler is more your assistant than your man. It would be an imposition if we took your three villainous ex soldiers along."
Caleb laughed.
"Well they are happily employed still in uncovering a smuggling ring somewhere in rural Essex, the last I heard" he said. "Gabriel petitioned me to retain their services a while longer; Sir Nathanial is paying for them, so it's no skin off his nose and helpful to have extra men. Now what are we likely to need for this unlikely murder?"
Jane rose from the pleasantly distracting perch on her husband's knee and sat down again to peruse the letter with great care.
"Very well, as far as I can unravel this, Nessie and the Opera Dancer – who rejoices under the unlikely name of Floradora d'Ambrose and according to Nessie has letters from a friend written to her as a more believable Jemima Harris – were invited to a long weekend house party by Floradora's intended, Mr Henry Popham, cousin to Nessie by some degree, and whom he asked to be the hostess in lieu of anyone more suitable. Lovely man, if he put it that way, he almost deserves to be murdered" she added.
"Would you choose Agnes Fanshawe to be a hostess?" asked Caleb.
"No, but there was no need to put it that way, if put it that way he did; which I have no reason to doubt, since Nessie holds – or held – him in some fearful awe for making her feel so much below him as to be insignificant."
"A proud man? one wonders that he would deign to marry an opera dancer then" said Caleb.
"Yes, it does seem strange" said Jane. "However, he appears to have been quite besotted by her. It appears that he has done some financial backing of plays, Nessie says something about another backer being invited too. As well as sundry of Mr Popham's nephews, nieces or cousins. It was by way of a time to introduce his intended to the family, and no mention to be made of Flora's – Nessie calls her Flora – origins. So it appears the houseparty also includes Mr Popham's sister, her spouse and offspring, and a couple of cousins as well as this other man who knows Flora. It's a little difficult to read; Nessie has cried liberally onto the paper smudging it, really I cannot feel that she was fond enough of so proud a cousin to have such an outbreak of sensibility!"
Caleb held out a hand and Jane passed the letter over.
"I'd say myself," he opined, "Her tears were more over the distinct disharmony of the household and their reactions to the news that the man they all appear to have expectations from was to be getting married. There's a garbled reference to twins and 'baiting Beau Popham' and complaints from Popham's sister that she should have been hostess; which leads to the thought that this was not a very pleasant house party at all."
Jane sighed.
"And to think I thought the Redmayne house party singularly fraught with friction!" she said. "Must it always be so with wealthy men who have not got clear heirs?"
"Considering what cases of sudden death I have seen, there need not be much wealth at all and there can be friction and jealousy even with a clear heir" said Caleb dryly.
"Ah well, at least I do not enter the situation with close friends; for I felt it incumbent upon me to support the Redmayne sisters as I felt such rapport with dear Euphelia" said Jane. "Nessie and I were never close, though she writes with the sort of cloying affection that would seem to suggest we went about with arms around each others' waists. It was an affection she was wont to assume when she was unable to return an essay in French and needed help" she added thoughtfully.
Caleb laughed.
"I wager it put you off helping her more than it encouraged you!" he said.
"Well, yes; but one couldn't help being sorry for her" said Jane. "If she had been pretty, her air of helplessness might have attracted some chivalrous male willing to immolate himself on the altar of fluttering butterfly airs and cherish her until he got bored enough to take a mistress."
"I wince" said Caleb. "Is she truly that hopeless?"
"No; but she does a very good impression of it" said Jane. "It got her out of all kinds of trouble at school. I – I wouldn't say she was precisely duplicitous but at times it came close. She learned not to play off her airs on me so we shall get a relatively straight story from her. One does wonder what sort of woman Mr Popham's sister must be though, if Nessie is by comparison a better hostess."
"Well no doubt we shall find out when we get to…" Caleb glanced back at the missive, "…Amberfield Abbey. Impressive address; I wonder what his ancestor did for Henry VIII."
"Mr Knightley always claims that his ancestor was a pirate-in-chief in the king's fleet to get Donwell" laughed Jane "Which somehow I doubt. More than likely it was bought and paid for ; and possibly not at the time of the dissolution. However, that is not to the point. Merely that we shall arrive too late to view the body and will have to work entirely with hearsay evidence."
"Be good experience for young Henry Redmayne then to review the same" said Caleb. "I doubt he's going to want to be left out; and he was a good helpmate before. Well, at least Miss Fanshawe has kept her head enough to tell us that he was stabbed in the neck with an ornamental dagger he used to open letters with and that 'Flora had only added to the horror of the situation by reverting to Shakespeare'. I wonder just what Miss Fanshawe meant by that?"
"I suspect, since there is a superstition that you should neither quote from, nor directly mention, 'Macbeth' – the euphemism is to call it 'The Scottish Play' – that the silly wench said 'who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him', the comment by Lady Macbeth about King Duncan" said Jane, dryly.
"Well being an opera dancer I expect she's familiar with a lot of the plays" said Caleb. "One of the few I know! Tactless remark to make about her betrothed though."
"Judging from what Nessie has said, I suspect she took the chance to have a comfortable and easy life without anticipating reciprocating her lover's passions" said Jane. "And jumped at the chance to be a wife not a mistress."
"I won't say you're wrong, Jane girl" said Caleb. "And more we can find out when we arrive."