They found themselves back on the first floor again, and wandered into the damaged east wing. It was eerily quiet in this part of the house, and cold, the whole wing having not been heated since the fire. Although servants had made temporary repairs to shore up the walls and ceilings in the burned-out rooms, Mr. Morris had decided yesterday to begin the formal restoration work after the new year. Until then, the wing stood dreary, drafty, and deserted.
She paused in front of what remained of the master suite. Behind her, the door stood ajar. “Murdering Bingley and Jane provides an oh-so-clever solution to Hurst’s problems. We have trouble imagining him capable of it not because he has too much honor, but too much cowardice. Their deaths make his life easier — and ease motivates Hurst above all else — but he hasn’t the fortitude to witness it happening. So rather than risk a direct confrontation, he resorts to indirect means like tampering with carriages. He couldn’t even cause his victims immediate harm while they lay defenseless in a drugged sleep — instead, he set fire to Jane’s dress across the room and made his exit before the flames reached them.”
Darcy had spent far more time in Hurst’s company than had Elizabeth. Her assessment of him was based on a few weeks’ total exposure, spread over more than a year, with little direct interaction. Yet she had captured his character with accuracy. Hurst was lazy, unresourceful, disengaged from the family. Were Darcy suddenly stripped of his fortune, he would find some honest means of supporting his wife and any children God blessed them with, even if it meant lowering himself to earn a living as a common farmer. He could not say the same of Hurst. His way of life threatened, unable to imagine another one, and unwilling to expend any effort toward his own maintenance, Hurst must be in a panic. And men in a panic made bad choices.
Repugnant as the idea was, he had to consider both Hurst and Kendall as suspects. But suspects in what? He had no proof that the Bingley family’s troubles were anything other than a string of unfortunate, but unrelated, accidents.
“I should speak more with Hurst and Kendall before we explore this any further.”
“Then take care that you do it before somebody winds up dead.”
As they turned to head back to the main part of the house, a draft from the master suite caught Darcy’s neck. He approached the gaping door, intending to pull it closed. Instead he stopped short.
“We’re too late.”
Twenty-five
“Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly.”
Elizabeth, writing to Mrs. Gardiner,
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 26
Someone had decided to free them all from Lawrence Kendall’s company.
Darcy tried to block his wife’s view of the violent spectacle, but she disregarded his attempts and pushed the door fully open. Mr. Kendall’s unmoving form lay facedown on the floor. A dark red circle stained the upper left side of his back.
He caught her hand and tried to draw her away from the room. “Elizabeth, this is not a sight for—”
She shook off his grasp. “I’m hardly going to succumb to an attack of the vapors.” Despite her bravado, she entered the room slowly and stopped about three feet from the body.
He followed. It was even chillier in the room than it had been in the hall. A grey film coated the windows, further darkening the cloudy light that filtered in and lent an ashen hue to Kendall’s already pale form.
They stood in mute shock for he knew not how long. Much as he’d despised Lawrence Kendall, he would not wish such a fate on anyone. His wife shuddered, whether from cold or horror he could not tell.
“How long do you suppose he’s been lying here?” she finally asked.
He knelt for a closer look. He had seen death before; it had come early for his parents, earlier still for three infant siblings between him and Georgiana. It had arrived violently for a rash Cambridge schoolmate who had insisted on proving his honor in a duel. That display had been the worst, a ghastly spectacle the likes of which he’d thankfully never borne witness to again. Until today.
Kendall’s blood had congealed into a thick paste, though for a fatal injury, the inch-long wound had produced less than he would have expected from someone who had bled to death. Shielding his actions as best he could from Elizabeth, he rolled the body halfway over to check for additional wounds. Kendall’s flesh was icy to the touch, his limbs stiff. No other wounds presented themselves, but his sides were swollen with fluid, and blood stained his mouth and cravat. The attack must have pierced his lung, causing him to bleed within and drown in his own blood.
Darcy elected not to share that gruesome detail with his wife. He released his hold and let the body roll back into the position in which they’d found it. “I would say he has lain here for hours, at least. Perhaps since last night.” He rose and took her hand once more. “Come, Elizabeth. This is no scene for a lady’s eyes.”
“We just found someone dead! What ladylike pursuit would you have me go undertake? Shall I stitch a sampler?” One hand rose to her throat. “My God, Darcy — there is a murderer at Netherfield. A murderer! And it isn’t Mr. Kendall! We’ve speculated for days about all these strange goings-on, but I don’t think I truly believed it possible until this moment that there’s a killer among us. A man is dead, by the hand of someone we know! What do we do?”
“Bingley will summon the constable.” For whatever good that would do. If London’s charleys were barely competent, country lawmen were worse. Darcy doubted the ability of any constable to adequately investigate a crime with no obvious solution. Meanwhile, a killer freely roamed Netherfield’s corridors — a killer in the guise of a friend.
Elizabeth stared at Kendall’s corpse. “He never came to dinner. I wonder if he was dead then?”
“No one regretted his absence”—Darcy had actually been relieved by it—“so he could easily have been missing since dinner without anyone thinking or caring to look for him. And nobody, even the servants, has reason to come to this part of the house.”
He scanned the floor, seeking evidence of what had happened in Kendall’s final moments. The businessman lay sprawled — had not survived the strike long enough to crawl toward help as his lung filled with blood. He’d been stabbed from behind, with a knife, Darcy presumed. By whom?
Scraps of wood and other debris lay strewn throughout the chamber, but no obvious clue presented itself. The weakened floorboards creaked under his weight as he looked about. He hesitated to wander too far into the room, lest he disturb the layer of dust and soot that had settled on the floor. He and Elizabeth had already left a trail of footprints from the door to Kendall’s body, Elizabeth’s obscured by the sway of her gown’s hem. Their tracks added to the swirling mass of impressions already surrounding the body, and prints from Mr. Morris’s inspection yesterday. He did not want to create more tracks before the constable arrived.
He noticed, however, a set of fresh footprints that led to Jane’s writing desk. In size and stride length, they matched a faint older set Kendall had left when he’d nosed about the room with Darcy a few days earlier. Perhaps Darcy’s comment to Parrish that demolition work was about to begin had inspired one last search of the desk before it was destroyed.
Another fresh set of prints, spaced farther apart, extended about halfway into the room. The trail mixed with Kendall’s prints, then doubled back to the door. Kendall’s body had fallen facing away from the desk, his head nearest the door. “He was struck as he was leaving.”
She shuddered and hugged herself. “Do you think he saw his attacker?”
Darcy studied the footprints further. “I believe Kendall returned here to break into the desk. The killer could not have sneaked in after him, because the creaking floorboards would have betrayed him. So the murderer either was hiding in the dark when Kendall entered, or Kendall was aware of his presence. They may have arrived together, or the attacker may have come in later, but Kendall would have heard him enter.”
“You’re sure it’s a ‘him’? Kendall wasn’t the only man attacked last night. Caroline Parrish—”
“A large man stabbed in the back?” He considered the possibility a moment, then shook his head. “Mrs. Parrish does have a questionable history with knives, but I doubt this her work. A woman’s hemline would have left traces in the dust, and yours are the only such marks. Her feet would have made smaller prints. Plus, according to Parrish, she was sedated last night. I think it is safe to say that a man did this.”
“Which means the killer is Bingley, Parrish, Randolph, or Hurst. We can eliminate Bingley — the very thought that he could have killed anybody, even Kendall, is ludicrous. Parrish was busy dealing with his wife and has the scars to prove it. That leaves Randolph, who was very late coming to dinner, and Hurst, who was foxed before the soup was served.”
“Randolph has no motive. He is probably the only person at Netherfield without a connection to Kendall.” He sighed heavily, disliking the logical conclusion to which that fact led. “So Hurst becomes our chief suspect.”
“Kendall’s death does solve his financial problems. And with the convenience of one quick strike — far more efficient than eliminating his wife’s entire family.” Her gaze flickered to the corpse, then away again. The spectacle obviously distressed her. It distressed him, for heaven’s sake. He wished she would allow him to lead her away and return to pursue his investigation alone, but knew he could not fight her resolve.
“Stabbing is a more direct method than I would have given Hurst credit for,” she continued, “but striking his victim from behind is cowardly enough. Then afterward he drinks himself into oblivion.”
Elizabeth’s line of thought echoed Darcy’s own. Hurst possessed a pocketknife. He had cause. And Kendall, cockily pulling Hurst’s strings like a marionette, could have himself provided the opportunity for Hurst to act, could have brought him up to this deserted place to issue more threats or coerce him into searching for Bingley’s records. Then desperation had at last forced the lazy man to act.
Hurst, the murderer. Reprehensible thought! But a reasonable explanation of events.
He studied again the confusing mass of footprints surrounding Kendall. A trail of them seemed to circle the body. Upon closer examination, he realized that they paralleled a dark outline on the floorboards that had previously escaped his notice in the dim light. The line appeared to have been made by scraping a charred piece of wood across the floor. Straight lines within the circle formed a star, with Kendall at its center.
Elizabeth followed his observations. “That is most curious. Where did those marks come from?”
He shook his head in ignorance. “I cannot imagine why Kendall or Hurst would trace such a pattern on the floor, either before or after the murder.”
“The design looks familiar — I’ve seen it before.” She frowned. “Though I cannot remember where.”
He approached the body once more. Kendall’s arms shot out from his sides; his fingers combed the dust. An unexpected but genuine surge of pity passed through Darcy. What an undignified way to die!
Kendall’s right hand caught Darcy’s attention. Scratches covered the back of it. Darcy bent for a better look, and discovered that the same symbol etched on the floor had been carved into Kendall’s skin. He hadn’t noted the mutilation immediately because unlike the back wound, these scratches had not bled.
Something shiny was trapped under the palm. He bent down and lifted Kendall’s hand, tried to pry stiff fingers away from the round article. A thin chain slid down. Darcy used it to tug the object out of the dead man’s grasp. He gasped in recognition.
So did Elizabeth. “Professor Randolph’s watch.”
Twenty-six