Murder at Mansfield Park

unnatural silence began to take
possession of the room, and as the whispers died away, Maddox heard the sounds of the approaching horses.
    The carriages came to a halt before the open door, the two hearses drawn by plumed horses, the first curtained in black, the second in maiden white. Maddox saw, with no little consternation,
that the cortège was accompanied by Henry Crawford on horseback. The master of the house then took his place in the family carriage, and a few moments later the solemn procession began to
make its slow way down the sweep. By the time they reached the church, the long line of servants following on foot had been considerably augmented by tenants from the Mansfield estate, and the
carriages of the best local families, their blinds pulled down.
    As the Mansfield footmen carried the two coffins into the nave, and Maddox took his own seat near the back of the church, he saw that Mrs Grant and her sister were already seated in the
parsonage pew. He found it hard to believe that it was only a few days since he had last seen Mary Crawford, so changed was her appearance. Her face was drawn, and there was a hollowness about her
eyes that did not augur well. He wondered, for a moment only, whether he might not be following the wrong course, but told himself that he was allowing his partiality for this woman to impede his
professional judgment. Knowing what he did of Dr Grant, he could not hope for brief eulogia on the deceased, but all the same, he found himself unexpectedly affected by the signs of genuine grief
that attended the clergyman’s account of Julia Bertram’s short life; her father and brother were visibly distressed, and her young maid, Polly Evans, wept inconsolably in Mrs
Baddeley’s motherly arms.
    When Dr Grant turned his attention to the late Mrs Crawford, Maddox was aware of an immediate and decided change in the mood in the church; there was little evidence of sorrow now, whether real
or feigned, and the few murmurings that came to Maddox’s ears were expressions of sympathy for the plight of Mr Norris, a fact which he found both surprising and instructive. Nor did Maddox
envy the clergyman his task: it was clear that, were it any other young woman but Sir Thomas’s niece, Dr Grant would have deemed it his Christian duty to present her fate as an awful warning
to the congregation, and a caution against the evils of lust and avarice, but he was painfully constrained by the presence of his patron, and the demands of common politeness. It demanded all the
ingenuity of a casuist to steer a safe course through such dangerous waters; to bury Mrs Crawford without praising her, and give an account of her life without referring to the husband who had
seduced her, or the cousin who would be charged on the morrow with having done her to death. The husband, at least, had the good grace to appear abashed, and while Henry Crawford held his head high
in the family pew, there was a spot of colour on each cheek that spoke either of a considerable suppressed anger, or an inner regret rising to wretchedness; even Maddox, with all his aptitude for
physiognomy, could not determine which. It was of a piece with what he had come to know of the man, and he laid up this latest observation alongside the new intelligence Fraser had brought with him
from Enfield. Henry Crawford was a conundrum that appeared to grow more complex the more closely he examined it; he had yet to decide if the solution to that conundrum was a matter of intellectual
curiosity, or some thing more significant, but he hoped he might not have to wait very much longer to obtain his answer.
    When the service was concluded, the gentlemen rose to accompany the coffins down into the family vault, and the assembled mourners waited in respectful silence; a silence broken only by the
quiet weeping of Evans, and the whispered words of comfort offered by the housekeeper. Several minutes elapsed before Sir Thomas reappeared, his own face as white as if iced over by death. His
halting progress down the aisle, supported by his son, was pitiful to see, and Maddox wondered whether the old gentleman’s health might never recover from the series of shocks he had
sustained. Maddox was one of the last of the mourners to attain the door, and what he saw outside did not surprise him: there was a crowd of people thronging the church-yard, but both Henry
Crawford and his sister were gone.
    The knell was still tolling behind her as