Page 30

TRAGEDY

I t was not until dinner that the ladies joined the gentlemen again. Many plans and strategies had been laid down both amongst the ladies and the gentlemen. All that remained was for the plans to be explained.

“Christopher, Mark, and I are to leave for Devon in the morning,” the earl announced over dinner.

“Christopher and Mark will do no such thing! They are to marry within the week. I understand the urgency of the situation with Georgiana, but the scandal and the question of the Bennet family cannot be overlooked or overshadowed. Go and search yourself, my dear, and take Nick with you. Christopher and Mark can join you after the wedding. Kitty and Caroline deserve that much respect! Lord knows it is an open secret that the girls are already expecting. Any delay in the wedding and it will give credence to those vicious rumours,” Lady Matlock declared.

“We had planned to take our betrotheds with us, mother,” Christopher protested.

“No, you will stay here and you will both marry the girls properly and do something decently!” Lady Matlock insisted. “It is not either of your fault that you are in this situation, but you can certainly make the situation right by the girls!”

Fitzwilliam and Mark looked down at their plates embarrassed as Mrs Bennet loudly seconded the instruction.

Bingley stood and without a word, abruptly left the room.

Conversation stopped with their host’s strange behaviour, but for a few minutes, the clink of cutlery against the china was the only sound in the room. The conversation was again about to begin when the sound of a gunshot was heard in the study. Instantly the earl, Fitzwilliam, and Mark were on their feet with Darcy struggling to his own. “Stay with the ladies, Fitz,” Fitzwilliam instructed his cousin. “You may be sick, but if there’s an intruder you will know how to defend them.”

Fitzwilliam then followed his father and soon-to-be brother from the room, towards the study. On the desk were several letters, surprisingly neatly addressed for the careless Mr Bingley. On the floor under the desk lay Bingley’s pistol and in the chair was the lifeless body of their friend. It was clear. There was no intruder.

“Touch nothing!” The earl snapped as they stood taking in the scene. “Return to the ladies. Do not alarm them. Send a servant to call for the local sheriff. Everything has to be done properly.”

The gentlemen backed out of the study, the earl taking the key from inside the door and locking the study behind him. Mr Bingley was beyond their aid now and locking the study would keep everything as they had found it. Fitzwilliam glared at his father. “I would be faster than any damn servant!”

“You would also look guilty as hell!” The earl growled. “We all know you’re innocent, but unless you do things properly there’s no way to prove that!”

Fitzwilliam grunted. His father was correct. He’d killed men and made the scene look the same. He was trained to kill and he could do it with almost as deadly accuracy as any sharpshooter! He was not proud of that fact and he was thankful that he had been dining with the rest of the family when it happened and not alone. He also suspected the reason that Bingley had done it that night. He had been spotted leaving Jane’s room the previous night.

Returning to the room, he did not say anything but returned to his cold food as though it was another ordinary day, while Mark related the scene to the ladies.

“Christopher Horace Fitzwilliam! How can you observe such a thing and still have an appetite?” Lady Matlock chided her son.

Fitzwilliam grinned and shrugged. “I’ve been to war, mother.” He continued eating.

“Do you not have any feelings? Your friend and host has just died in the house and you sit eating as though you have not a care in the world!”

Fitzwilliam laid his fork down and looked his mother dead in the eyes. “Mother, I have seen things that you can only imagine. If I had lost my appetite after every battle we fought, I would have starved to death. The scene in Bingley’s study is clean in comparison to the horrors of mud, smoke so thick you cannot see through it, and gunpowder covering your face from ripping open the cartridges for our guns. I have had the dead bodies of friends fall on top of me and I have seen bodies blown apart by guns, cannon, and they’re testing those new rockets too. I have led many a march after a battle either back to camp or into the next battle site, covered in blood, guts, and grime from warfare with no time to change so much as my cravat! Do I care that it is our friend that is dead? Of course, I do, but I’ve lost too many of my friends to stop eating because of it!”

“There was no need for that graphic description at the table!” Lady Matlock answered, looking slightly sick.

Fitzwilliam grinned. “That is the sanitised version of what I could have said, I assure you!”

“Lord help us, I’ve raised a savage!” Lady Matlock gently teased her son. “You are far too cavalier about death.”

“I’ve seen far more of it than one man has a right to do so,” Fitzwilliam sadly told her. “Believe me when I say that it haunts my dreams.” He took a deep breath. “Kitty, you might prefer me to sleep on the couch tonight.”

Catherine was about to answer, but thought better of it. Their sleeping arrangements were between them.

The conversation continued long into the night as they waited for the sheriff to arrive. However, sunrise streaked the skyline as the tired and harassed sheriff finally rode up the drive to Netherfield. The sheriff looked around the study and asked many questions of the ladies, before dinner the following day, beginning to interview the gentlemen. Darcy was unable to give much information as despite the closeness of the two friends, it appeared that Bingley had continued to be angry at Darcy for the purchase of Netherfield. When the earl was interviewed the sheriff inquired into his affairs minutely, but everything being in order, there was little reason for the earl to be suspected. Having grown up calling Mark by the name of Mary, the sheriff felt uncomfortable interviewing him as Mark and constantly tried to goad Mark into a reaction by calling him Mary. Mark, however, did not hesitate. He answered to both names and was as forthcoming as he could be. Fitzwilliam was the last to be interviewed. The sheriff was tired and wanted this over and done with. Each of the letters Bingley had left were opened and read. They all told of a troubled young man haunted by the loss inflicted on him as a child and guilt that it was he who had caused his father to die in prison. There was no mysterious death. Bingley had lost the battle against his own mind and thinking he was less of a man, he had taken the pistol and shot himself during dinner. The sheriff and the apothecary agreed there was no need to examine the body. So Mr and Mrs Hurst, along with Miss Bingley called in the undertaker for a coffin and began the process of preparing their brother’s body for burial. Fitzwilliam and Mark aided them with it and the day before the wedding, they laid Bingley in the ground.