Murder at Mansfield Park

Chapter 21

When Mary opened her eyes it was to see Charles Maddox sitting at her side. She was lying down, with a blanket about her, and there were lamps burning in the room. Something was obscuring her left eye, and she put up her hand to find a thick cloth bandage had been wound about her head. She stared at Maddox for a moment, her vision still blurred, then endeavoured to sit up.

"Have a care, my dear Miss Crawford. You have had a terrible shock, and are not yet fully recovered."

She looked around at the room; her head was painfully heavy, but her mind clearing; she was starting to remember what had happened — and why she now found herself lying on a sopha in the drawing-room at the White House. Mrs Norris had attacked her, and Edmund —

"Where is he?" she said quickly. "He needs help — he was given — "

" — a fatal dose of laudanum, I know. Fear not, Miss Crawford; he is in the best hands. Mr Gilbert and Mr Phillips are upstairs with him now.We were able to get help to him quickly, and purge the system before the poison took full effect. He is still very ill, but they are in hopes that no mortal damage has been done. If he lives, he will have much to thank you for."

Mary turned away, her eyes filling with tears; it was too much. Charles Maddox watched her for a moment.

"I am afraid I cannot offer you the use of my handkerchief; I had to use it to staunch the bleeding. The cut you have sustained is deep, and you lost a quantity of blood. Mr Gilbert has done his best to dress it, but you have, I fear, quite ruined your gown." He smiled. "This time, at least, there is no need to prove that the blood is indeed your own."

"You have cuts on your own hand," she said weakly.

Maddox shook his head dismissively. "I have borne far worse in the past. These are mere scratches, incurred in the process of unlawful entry into Mrs Norris’s house."

Mary nodded slowly; she had no memory of such a thing, but it must indeed have been so, though in all her girlish dreams of a princely rescuer riding to her deliverance on a milk-white palfrey, he had never taken on such a shape as Maddox.

"How can I thank you," she began. "Had you not happened to be there — "

He got up and went to the side-table and poured a little wine, all the while avoiding her eye. "I think you should drink what you can of this," he said. "As to my presence, you will find out soon enough that it was not quite so fortuitous as it might seem. This case has been one of the most demanding of my career. The evidence pointed first one way, and then another. I will confess, Miss Crawford, that until very recently I was fully convinced that it was your brother who was responsible. No-one had a better motive than he."

"But — "

Maddox held up his hand. "As I said, that was what I had

thought. You may possibly be aware that I have deployed my men to gather information."

"To listen at doors, you mean."

"On occasion, yes. You look reproving, and no doubt it is not a very commendable activity, but murder is not a very commendable activity either, and as we have discussed together once before, I am sometimes forced to employ methods that fine ladies and gentlemen find distasteful, in order to discover the truth.This was one such circumstance."

He took the empty glass from her hand, and sat down beside her once more.

"When you met Mr Norris at the belvedere, your tête-à-tête was not, as you believed, à deux

, but à trois. My man Stornaway was listening."

Mary flushed, and she felt the wound above her eye begin to throb. "That was an outrageous intrusion, Mr Maddox — "

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. It has, however, been of the most vital importance in elucidating this case. Stornaway could not hear every word, but he did discern enough. Thus when Mr Norris came to me and confessed, I knew at once that it was a complete invention from beginning to end. A few pertinent — or impertinent — questions on my part were enough to put the matter beyond question. Unlike almost everyone else in the house, Mr Norris had actually seen Mrs Crawford’s body, so he was able to describe the injuries he had supposedly inflicted with tolerable accuracy. However, he had absolutely no idea that Miss Julia Bertram had died anything other than a perfectly natural, if lamentable, death. I knew, then, that he was lying."

"So why did you arrest him? Why confine him here like a criminal, and let us all believe him guilty? How could you do such a thing?"

"Because I had no alternative. And if you recall, I did go to great lengths to ensure that he would not be removed to Northampton, nor suffer the indignities of the common jail."

Mary turned her face away, and he saw, once more, the thinness of her face, and the hollowness under her eyes; she had clearly suffered much in those two days.