Murder at Mansfield Park

only person I have encountered at Mansfield to exhibit it. A fact which is most significant, in the
circumstances.’
    He could have carried on in the same vein a good deal longer, but elected to be merciful; this girl had suffered enough, and all to no purpose.
    ‘I have considerable experience in the art and act of killing, Miss Bertram. It is not a suitable subject for young ladies’ ears, and I myself am frequently shocked and sickened at
the extremities of cruelty and pain that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another. But such a long and intimate acquaintance with the many methods by which my fellow men have met an
untimely death, allows me to be quite categorical as to certain critical aspects of the horrible crime I have been asked to investigate here, including the full significance of the exact position
of the wounds that killed Miss Price. In consequence, I know for a fact you did not take your cousin’s life. The person who wielded that mattock did so with their right
hand .’
    It took several more minutes to convince her, and even longer to quiet her into any thing resembling a composed state of mind, but Maddox was patient. He had one more question to ask, and a
demand to make, and he required her to be both rational and sensible when he did so.
    ‘Before I allow you to depart,’ he said presently, ‘I must enjoin you to absolute secrecy as to the nature of our discussion this morning; I have already commanded as much from
your maid. I am sure Miss Bertram will find herself more than willing to accede to this request, in exchange for a reciprocal silence on my part. After all, I cannot believe she would wish to
submit her mother, in particular, to further unseemly revelations about the goings-on in her own family.’
    There was a blush at this, and she bent her head with downcast eyes.
    ‘Good. I was sure we would understand one another. My final request will not, I am sure, surprise you. Would you be so good as to inform me what exactly Miss Price said to you that
morning?’
    Maria stared into the distance, as if to force her attention to the reviving of such a distasteful memory.
    ‘It was very much as you surmised. I was astonished to see her—and see her in such high spirits, into the bargain. I asked where she had been, but she told me that was her affair,
and none of mine. She said this in that arrogant, imperious way she had when we were alone, and out of the hearing of either of my parents—as if I was little better than a servant, or one of
her pitiable underlings. I had been angry before, but her words and her tone aroused a fury such as I had never felt before. I thought of all the distress she had caused—the scandal in the
neighbourhood—my mother’s grief—and yet there she was, parading about in her finest clothes, with no thought for the fact that she had put the whole family through days of doubt
and misery on her account. Some part of this I think I said—my recollection is somewhat confused—but I do recall her laughing. Laughing out loud, and saying that she did indeed doubt
that the like alarm would have been raised if I had been the one to go off with a man, instead of her. They would not have missed me half so much, she said, or wasted half the effort
to discover me , always assuming I could have persuaded any man of fortune or distinction to take me in the first place.’
    A single tear rolled down her cheek at this, and Maddox was moved to pity her; he could only imagine what submitting to the incessant spite and ascendancy of her cousin had been to a temper like
Maria Bertram’s, an evil which even the comfort and elegance of such an eligible home could not have entirely atoned for. He had never met Miss Price, but every thing he had heard of her
declared her to have been a monster of complacency and pride, who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, had succeeded in dominating Mansfield Park, and everyone in it. And without presuming to
judge whether she had merited such a fate, he suspected, nonetheless, that Maria Bertram was not the only member of the family who might have yearned for a world without Miss Price, however much
they might have shrunk from such a savage and brutal way of achieving it.
    ‘Go on, Miss Bertram,’ he said softly. ‘We shall soon have done.’
    ‘I know she meant those words as provocation; I know she meant to insult and offend; but that was no excuse. I will think of what followed with shame