Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron Page B

his surprise.
    “I am afraid, Mr. Grey, that I am less hasty than yourself. I cannot apprehend a man before I know his name.”
    “But it is obvious! Collingforth is the man. My poor wife's corpse was discovered in his chaise!”
    “In such matters, the obvious may prove a doubtful guide,” Neddie returned steadily. “Mr. Collingforth's movements are vouched for by his acquaintance. It seems almost impossible that he should have murdered your wife on the Wingham road, and returned her body to his own chaise. I fear we must look farther afield for the responsible party.”
    Valentine Grey commenced to pace the length of the saloon in agitation, then halted before French windows giving out onto the gardens, one hand pressed to his brow.
    “Can you offer any reason, sir, for your wife's brutal end?” Neddie enquired.
    “How can any man be expected to explain such a horror! She must have fallen into the clutches of a fiend!” Grey wheeled to face him, an expression of agony on his countenance so at variance with his earlier behaviour, that Neddie must confess himself amazed. “Can you bear to contemplate it, man? A lady alone—unprotected— quite disregarded by those in whom she placed her trust—”
    “Her trust?”
    Grey's next words had all the viciousness of a challenge. “Do not deny, man, that she was hated by the entire neighbourhood! Those who should have embraced and protected her as one of their own, rejected her from the first. Do not think I was ignorant of the coldness in which she lived. I saw all, I knew all—and it tore at my heart!”
    “Your wife, Mr. Grey, was not entirely one of Kent's own,” Neddie countered. “She was a Frenchwoman. In such times as these, her end must be suggestive.”
    “An act of war, you would say?” Grey laughed harshly. “Impossible. Francoise did nothing to excite a peculiar hatred.”
    “And yet she is dead,” Neddie observed bluntly. “Is it so unlikely that she should be killed by a fool? A simple-minded fellow who resented her triumph at the races, as he resented French victory on the battlefield? Such an one may have thought to strike at the Monster by murdering your wife.”
    Grey merely snorted.
    'You have failed to propose an alternative, Mr. Grey,” my brother burst out in exasperation.
    “Because there is none that I may offer.”
    'You can think of no one who might bear your wife ill-will?”
    “That is for yourself to determine, Mr. Austen, as the embodiment of the Law. I am told you are the Justice in these parts. Why, then, do I find you at such a loss? Is it perhaps because my wife was merely a French lady, that you exert yourself so little?”
    Neddie admitted that he began to grow angry. I am sure that he flushed, and controlled himself only with difficulty. But when at last he spoke, it was with admirable coolness. 'You have every reason to vent your anger at me, my dear sir. I should far rather you expressed yourself thus in the privacy of this room, than in the public venue of your unfortunate wife's inquest. It was exacdy my hope that we might speak in private before that distressing event, which is to occur on the morrow, as there is a matter of some delicacy I had hoped you might resolve.”
    Mr. Grey went pale. “What the Devil do you mean?”
    “I refer to the letter discovered among your wife's effects after her death.”
    “Letter? What letter?”
    Neddie presented the indelicate note from the unknown seducer. Grey read it through with commendable swiftness—he was clearly an adept at the French language—and then crumpled it in his fist.
    “I could offer you an hundred such, Austen. There is nothing so very unusual in this”
    “Indeed?” Neddie rejoined, somewhat surprised. “Mrs. Grey was often in the habit of eloping with gendemen not her husband?”
    Had Valentine Grey thrown down his glove at that moment, he might perhaps have been forgiven. Instead, he merely looked all his outrage, and endeavoured to