A wry smile formed on Mr. Deal’s lips. “My life with the gypsies indeed influenced me, but not in the manner you assume. The Roma are, in fact, not an avaricious people; their language does not even include a word for ‘possession.’ They take and use only what they need, and cannot comprehend the compulsion of ‘civilized’ men to acquire more.” His expression grew serious again. “When I say I did not aspire to the Churchills’ riches, I speak the truth, and after seeing the creature my birth mother became under the malignant influence of money, I am even more decided. I want no part of the Churchill fortune; my cousin Frank is welcome to it.”
“And is this what you told Agnes Churchill?”
“Our conversation never progressed that far. Even if it had, her own enslavement to power and wealth so distorted her thinking that I doubt she would have believed me.”
Mr. Deal cleared his throat several times. It was dry in the room, and he had been speaking some time with little interruption. Mr. Knightley rose and went to a small side table that held a decanter and glasses. As he poured a glass of wine and handed it to Mr. Deal, Darcy went to Elizabeth.
“What brings you?” he whispered.
“Mr. Cole was called away,” she whispered back, “but says he will return directly.” She nodded towards Mr. Deal. “This is quite a tale.” She appeared reluctant to leave.
Indeed, he would not mind hearing her assessment of the story when Mr. Deal had done telling it. “Stay if you wish. Though be discreet.”
He returned to his position near the table with the wine. Mr. Knightley had just topped off Mr. Deal’s glass.
“Pray, describe exactly what transpired during your meeting with Mrs. Churchill,” Mr. Knightley said.
Mr. Deal swallowed more wine before continuing. “I thought it would be best to meet only my mother first, so I waited for a time when Frank and Edgar Churchill were out — that is why the servant saw me loitering in the neighborhood. When the opportunity arose, I called at the house as a peddler and was granted an audience with Mrs. Churchill.”
Darcy having declined Mr. Knightley’s silent offer of wine for himself, the magistrate returned to his writing table and once more took up his pen.
“It was not a joyous reunion,” Mr. Deal continued. “Though I took care to hide my maimed arm from view, it caught her notice. She started, and peered into my face, where she found enough Churchill in my features to confirm her suspicion — which I did not deny.
“She paled and stepped back, arms thrust defensively in front of her, as if she beheld a ghost. I suppose in a sense, she did, for she had presumed me dead all these years. But she quickly recovered herself. Before I could offer even a word of explanation for having sought her out, or tell her how long I had imagined that moment, she accused me of coming to blackmail her, to steal her fortune, to threaten her position in society. How dare I appear after all these years to take what she had spent a lifetime protecting? How dare I presume to even breathe?”
He took a fortifying draught. “The full story of my nativity tumbled out. Her travail was long and difficult, surpassed in dreadfulness only by the horror of her first sight of me. The trauma she experienced was somehow my fault — I, an infant but minutes old. She refused to present a crippled son to her husband, or to acknowledge the deformed child as her own for all of society to judge her. What little blame that remained unassigned to me was laid on the head of the expensive London physician who had delivered me. Though the physician asserted that my deformity had manifested long before her lying-in and had nothing to do with the instruments he had employed as she labored, she threatened to destroy his reputation if he did not help her get rid of the child by telling Mr. Churchill that it had been stillborn. The attending nurse was paid to dispose of ‘the monstrosity.’ Mrs. Churchill did not care what happened to me, so long as she was never reminded of her terrible ordeal again.”
Darcy glanced at Elizabeth. Her countenance was full of pity and sadness. He, too, felt sympathy, yet — he hoped — maintained enough detachment to respond to Mr. Deal’s revelations objectively. As all Highbury had already witnessed, the peddler was a consummate storyteller.
Mr. Deal drained his wineglass. “You can imagine my pain upon hearing myself so described, my very existence thought of only in terms of its affront to her. But more was to come: When Mrs. Churchill had done spewing out the details of my first rejection, she cast me off a second time. After all these years, my father still believed I had been stillborn. She threatened my life if I revealed myself to Edgar Churchill or exposed them to society. Should I speak of this matter to another soul, no one would miss a lying vagabond peddler, she said, or question his disappearance.
“Her cruelty and selfishness stunned me. I told her, quite honestly, that neither she nor her husband need fear further contact from me. I had done with them both.”
Darcy refilled Mr. Deal’s wineglass. “She worked herself into this terrible temper entirely by herself? With no provocation from you?”
Mr. Deal stared at the glass thoughtfully. “Though her words were strong, I could see fear in her eyes at the threat my existence posed to her power and position in society, and within her marriage. I think that in the hidden recesses of her heart, where she dared not ever look, she had been waiting her whole life to be called to account for what she had done — a criminal living in perpetual dread of being caught. I think the knowledge of her sin preyed upon her nerves for nine-and-thirty years, growing sharper as she aged and came ever closer to facing her Creator. And when I appeared, the greed and guilt that had been feasting upon her soul came rushing forth in a torrent.”
He looked up at Darcy. “You said she died following our meeting — I heard that a seizure took her.” He set his wineglass on the candle pedestal beside his chair and turned to Mr. Knightley. “I swear to you, I did nothing to antagonize Mrs. Churchill or provoke her anger. Nor did the seizure begin while I was with her, though she was in such a state of agitation that I can well imagine it coming upon her. When I quit the house, however, she was alive and in full possession of her faculties. My only crime was that I was, too.”
Though Agnes Churchill had provided her son with ample motive for murder, Mr. Deal’s account of events was supported by the reports they had already received from her Richmond physician and household servants indicating that she died of an apoplectic fit. It seemed that if anybody was to blame for her death, it was Mrs. Churchill herself.
Edgar Churchill’s death, however, remained suspicious.
“You claim that you told Agnes Churchill you would attempt no contact with your father,” Darcy said, “yet you were seen with him here in Highbury at least twice — once in conversation at Randalls, and again in Broadway Lane whilst Frank purchased his snuff box.”
Mr. Deal nodded. “When I said that to Mrs. Churchill, I was so wounded by her treatment of me that I assumed I would receive a similar reception from her husband. But after my initial shock subsided and I had time to consider the matter, I realized that I was not the sole victim of her pride and deceit. In discarding me, she had denied Edgar Churchill his only son. I thought what my own feelings would be if I learned that an infant I believed I had buried more than half a lifetime ago was found to have lived. To the Roma, family is everything; to the English… not always. I had little reason to hope that Edgar Churchill was any different than his wife. He had married her, after all, and lived with her some forty years. But the fact that she had been so desperate to maintain his ignorance of me made me wonder what sort of man he was, and whether he might want to choose for himself to accept or reject me.
“My gypsy mother discouraged my wish to meet him. The omens were unclear, and she did not want to see my heart rent twice. I was persistent, however, and when the Churchills came to Highbury after Frank’s wedding, so did our caravan.
“As I had with Mrs. Churchill, I presented myself to my father first as merely a peddler, so that I might judge his character. I found him so very different from his wife that I could scarcely imagine them together. His manner encouraged my hopes and, with great caution, I revealed myself to him. He was understandably shocked, and grieved by my account of such deceit and cruelty on the part of his late wife. Yet he saw in me a glimpse of his younger self, and remembered irregularities in long-ago conversations with his wife, that made my story plausible.”
“He simply accepted you as his long-lost son upon the spot?” Mr. Knightley asked.
“Heavens, no. He was no gull. He intended to verify my history as best he could, and said he would write to his solicitor immediately. The physician who attended the birth was long dead, but the nurse might yet be found, and some of the servants present in the house that night were still with the family.”
“Money seemed to be foremost on Agnes Churchill’s mind,” Darcy said. “Did either you or he make any mention of your inheritance?”
“I assured him I did not want anything from him, save the pleasure of knowing him at last.”
“And how did he respond?”
“He promised that if I were indeed his son, I would finally know my father’s affection and acknowledgment.” He picked up his wine once more but did not drink, only stared at the glass in his hand. “That was the first and last conversation I had with him. We did not speak while Frank was purchasing his snuff box. It was too awkward, our acquaintance too new — more fragile than this glass.”
“Did he tell Frank Churchill about your conversation?” Darcy asked.
“If he did, my cousin has superior bluffing skills to even the gypsies, for he has betrayed no hint that he knows me as anything but a peddler.”
“You must have suffered quite a shock when your father died,” Mr. Knightley said.
“Indeed, yes.” He emptied the wineglass again, but declined Mr. Knightley’s offer of a third. “I grieved at the news. I grieve still.”
Mr. Deal rose and returned his wineglass to the side table from which Mr. Knightley had taken it. Elizabeth slipped out of the room. As she did so, Darcy caught sight of Mr. Cole in the hall.
“It sounds as if you learned a considerable amount about Edgar Churchill in a short period of time.” Mr. Knightley left his seat and approached him. “As you have no doubt heard, the coroner’s inquest ruled his death a case of poisoning, though whether accidental or deliberate remains undetermined. Can you think of anybody who might have wished him harm?”
The table rested beside a window, and Mr. Deal gazed into the gathering darkness. “I certainly did not. For me, his death could not have come at a worse time.” Bitterness tinged his voice. “I no sooner found my father than lost him.”
He turned to face Darcy and Mr. Knightley. “I have given you a full accounting of my dealings with the Churchills,” he said to the magistrate. “Am I free to leave?”
Mr. Knightley and Darcy exchanged glances. Mr. Knightley stepped forward.
“I am afraid not.”
“There is something so shocking in a child’s being taken away from his parents and natural home!”
— Isabella Knightley, Emma
Pending verification of his story and further enquiry into his gypsy associations, Hiram Deal was committed to the county gaol. Mr. Knightley could not risk such an experienced itinerant fleeing. After thirty years of wandering with a gypsy caravan, the peddler surely knew every cove and corner of England, and Mr. Knightley and Darcy had no doubt of Mr. Deal’s success should he take it into his mind to disappear.
As the Darcys crossed Broadway Lane toward their waiting carriage the following morning, Elizabeth recalled her first meeting with the peddler. Though she presumed he possessed a colorful history, she had never imagined it so extraordinary. God forgive her, she was almost glad Mrs. Churchill had met her demise. It was fitting retribution, unjust only in that she died of natural causes while her guiltless husband had been poisoned.
“Are you quite certain you wish to accompany me to Guildford?” Darcy asked. “I should think you could find any number of more pleasant ways to occupy the day.”
The street was busy, Highbury already abuzz with word of Hiram Deal’s arrest. Elizabeth would just as soon escape the small village for a time.