Murder at Mansfield Park

Mary made her way quickly to the rear gate of the White House. She had only visited the house once, quite early in her stay at the
parsonage, but she remembered it very clearly, having spent an extremely tedious hour being taken through every room by Mrs Norris, who did not scruple to point out every chair, table, silver fork,
and finger-glass, and who could enumerate the price of every item with as much facility as an agent shewing the house to a prospective tenant. Henry had warned her to remain out of sight until she
saw him on the terrace with Stornaway; the man was said to be partial to snuff, when he could get it, and Henry had still a plentiful supply of fine Macouba that he had purchased in St
James’s. It was hardly subtle, by way of a bribe, and should the man prove suspicious, Henry was not at all sure how he was to explain his sudden presence in the house; if pressed, he
intended to claim he bore a message from Sir Thomas, enquiring as to the arrangements for Mr Norris’s removal, but it was, at best, a poor excuse, as any astute sentinel would know; they must
hope that Maddox chose his subalterns for their physical not their mental prowess.
    The minutes passed slowly by, and Mary began to fear that the White House servants would return long before she would have the opportunity to see Edmund; but just at the moment when she was
about to give up hope, the door opened and she saw her brother and Stornaway emerge onto the terrace. Her heart was by this time beating so hard and so quick, that she could scarcely draw breath,
far less move, but move she must; there was no time to be lost. She waited until the two men had disappeared round the side of the house, then slipped up the garden path, and through the open door
into the drawing-room. She could hardly believe that she had actually attained the house without being detected, and stood motionless on the threshold, hardly knowing what to do next. She and Henry
had spent so long discussing how she might gain access to the house, that they had barely touched upon what she should do once she had achieved it. But her customary self-possession did not fail
her; she went quickly to the door, and stood in the hall, listening intently. At first the whole house seemed utterly quiet, but as her senses adjusted to the silence, she perceived that there was
a strange, low, rasping sound emanating from a room quite close by; were it not for the time of day, she might have supposed there was someone sleeping there. She crept softly along the hall and
stopped at the foot of the staircase; to her left the breakfast-parlour, to her right the dining-room, its door standing ajar. The sound, whatever it was, originated from there. Some thing impelled
her forward, she knew not what, and almost without daring to breathe, she placed her hand to the door and pushed it open.
    He was there. At the table, as if to eat—and there was, indeed, a plate at his side—but he was no longer sitting, no longer upright; he was slumped over the table, his head between
his arms, his face half-concealed. She made a move towards him, then stopped, noticing for the first time the bottle and empty glass at his hand. She had never known him intoxicated—had
thought, indeed, that he had an aversion to strong liquor in all its forms—and yet here he was, in the middle of the day, in a state of apparent drunkenness. Her first feeling was one of
guilty remorse—had she really brought him to this?—but a moment’s further observation led her to question her first response. There was still more than half a bottle of wine
remaining, and he could not possibly have been reduced to such a state after imbibing so small a quantity. He bore all the signs of intoxication—the stertorous respiration, the flushed
face—but as she moved closer, she could not discern the breath of wine.
    ‘Mr Norris?’ she said, hesitatingly. ‘May I speak to you for a moment?’
    There was no reply.
    Summoning all her courage, she put out a hand and took him by the shoulder, and spoke again, as loudly as she dared, ‘Mr Norris? Are you awake?’
    Once more, she received no reply, but the propinquity in which she now stood allowed to observe him more closely, and she perceived that his stupefaction did not so much resemble the effects of
drink, as the terrifying torpor into which Julia Bertram had descended, and from which they had not been able to reclaim her. She reached for the glass at once, and