Page 60 of A Matter of Murder

“I have to find a way to convince Sally to talk. Not only that, I have to find a way to convince her to tell us somethingtrue.” Lizzie paused, then added, “And I can’t make any missteps.”

“Right,” Darcy said, thinking of the stubborn set of Sally’s jaw every time they’d spoken to her. “Sounds simple enough.”

Fifteen

In Which Lizzie Finds a Clue and Loses Something Invaluable

Unfortunately for Lizzie, finding an approach to questioning Sally Burton would likely be easier than finding a time in which to do it. Time before the ball was running out, and Jane was leaning on Lizzie to help her with all the added duties involved with the preparations—the increase in correspondence, overseeing the airing out and cleaning of many rooms, designing the menu and having to redesign it once more when the Meryton market could not supply all their desired food items on such short notice, and endless lists.

So many lists.

In between the many preparations and Darcy’s assistance to Bingley, Lizzie, Darcy, and Charlotte spent as much time with the registers as possible. They decided to divvy up the work: Darcy would take the oldest register, Lizzie the second oldest, and Charlotte would read the newest. Without something specific to look for, the work was slow going, but they managed to meet inthe library two days before the ball, while Jane consulted with the housekeeper to go over the final details and Bingley caught up on correspondence with his overseas trade partners.

“Well,” Lizzie said, sitting down at a table next to Charlotte. “Have we found anything interesting?”

“If I have, I didn’t recognize it as significant,” Darcy said.

“I’ve uncovered many interesting things,” Charlotte said. “However, any relevance to the case at hand remains unclear.”

Lizzie tried to withhold a sigh. Research was an essential part of any solicitor’s career, of course. Reading her father’s legal books was what had first piqued her interest in the law, after all. But as she grew older, she found herself more drawn to people and cases than to theory and history—although Mr. Bennet had certainly made sure she had a strong foundation in both. She knew that with a case as old as this, and with few witnesses, the historical record could prove invaluable. But it was difficult to give these registers her total focus when Sally Burton was somewhere in this house, likely concealing secrets, and she could just divulge them... if Lizzie could find a way to persuade her.

“Lizzie?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, it was the usual ebb and flow of baptisms and burials, livened up by a handful of marriages each year and the occasional note about the weather or crop yield. There was a span of three pages devoted to every young man in the county who went to fight in America and who did and didn’t come back, but all of them were accounted for.” Lizzie grimaced at the memory of all the names listed as dead. “Eventually, anyway.”

“I read in mine that Dr. Fellowes used to pay regular visits to Honoria,” Charlotte said, holding up the register that covered the last thirty-five years.

“Really?” Lizzie asked. “What did they talk about?”

“Now, that he doesn’t say. See, he made record of the date and the people he visited. He visited her at least twice a month, starting...” Charlotte flipped through the book, and Lizzie noted that she’d cut several lengths of string and used them to mark her place. “Here. Twenty-three years ago this August.”

“Why?” Darcy asked. Then he looked at Lizzie. “He didn’t say anything about visiting her in your volume?”

“No. He received the living here about five years before Honoria married Geoffrey. He mentions her arrival to Netherfield, and the first time she comes to church with the family—there’s a rather unkind remark about how worried he was that she’d be Catholic on account of her ‘Spanish blood’ but she appears to be satisfactorily Anglican. And then that’s it, really, until... well, the deaths. Everything we’ve heard about the so-called curse is corroborated in here.” Lizzie paged through the book, having memorized the page numbers. “After that, Honoria is mentioned only very occasionally.”

“What about you, Darcy?” Charlotte asked.

“I’m afraid my volume is even drier than yours. The vicar before Fellowes was a man named Owens, and his records are perfectly perfunctory, but hardly interesting. I think it likely that he predates our case.”

“So much for that,” Lizzie muttered.

“Come now, we’re not giving up.” Darcy closed his book and then reached for a quarto sheet, pen, and ink. “Just because we didn’t stumble upon something obvious doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Perhaps we begin to make our own list of all the men who were born, say, at the beginning of your book, Lizzie, and then we make a list of all the burials, and cross-reference the two and track down whomever we can’t account for.”

Lizzie felt her eyes widen. “Darcy, that could take... days. Weeks, even. We don’t have that kind of time!”

“Don’t we?” Charlotte asked, looking between the two of them. “I thought we were here until Jane and Bingley return to London for the season?”

“Of course,” Lizzie said quickly, “but we can’t just let the mystery drag on forever! Jane’s reputation—”

“It is unfair how Jane has been treated,” Charlotte interrupted gently, “but that is not for you to fix. And we all hope that the ball will help matters on that front. What’s the rush?”

The rush, of course, was Lady Catherine. As soon as this mystery was solved, Lizzie would go back to London. She hoped she could do so after the ball, for she didn’t want to test Lady Catherine’s patience a third time.

Lizzie sighed. “Never mind, then. We make lists and cross-reference. But before we do that, is there anything else of interest that either of you found?”

Darcy shook his head, and Charlotte looked mildly suspicious, but she did not press Lizzie. “I found record of Sally Burton’s baptism.” She turned to another string-marked pageand turned the book around before sliding it over to Lizzie. Darcy leaned in as well.

Lizzie skimmed the page until she found the entry that Charlotte was tapping with her index finger.Sally Ann Burton, baptized this day, the twenty-second of March, it read.