Murder at Mansfield Park

her youthful passions, and the weak hold of more temperate counsels over the immoderation of youth and zeal; she knew, likewise, that Julia had been frantic to prevent the felling of
the avenue, and in her high-wrought state, weakened by recent illness, the event had no doubt taken on a disproportionate enormity in her child-like mind.
    As Mary sat retrospecting the whole of the affair, and the conversations she herself had witnessed, she began to perceive—all too late—that Julia might, indeed, have come to regard
Fanny as wholly to blame for the disaster about to befall her beloved trees, believing her cousin could have prevented it, had she been prepared to intercede, and use her considerable influence to
compel her uncle to alter his plans. Much as her heart revolted from the possibility, Mary’s imagination could easily conceive of a meeting between the two cousins in the park that ill-fated
morning—the very morning that the work was due to commence. She could picture Fanny listening to her cousin’s pleas with contempt and ridicule, and Julia, provoked beyond endurance,
striking out in desperation and fury, if only to put an end for ever to the scorn in that voice. She did not want to believe it, but her heart told her that it was possible, just as her mind
acknowledged that it would explain many things that had puzzled her hitherto; it would render Julia’s despairing decision to chain herself to the trees more readily comprehensible; and it
would account for her terror at the sight of her cousin’s coffin. Mary thought back to that dreadful scene, and recalled, with a cold shudder that carried irrefutable conviction, the actual
words Julia had used. She saw her in imagination, standing in the door of her chamber, her hand to her mouth, crying out, ‘ She is not dead, she cannot be dead.’ But how
could she possibly have known whose coffin it was? The family had been careful to conceal the news of her cousin’s death from her. There was only one answer, only one explanation.
    How Kitty Jeffries had come to discover the secret, Mary could not guess; all she did know, was that discover it she had, and Maddox had wrung it from her. Even now, she thought, he must be
waiting only for Julia’s recovery to question and apprehend her, and she recalled with a tremor of sick dread her own brother’s words as to the fate that must inevitably attend the
perpetrator of such a crime. She started up and began to pace the room, unable to keep her seat with any composure. She could see no way to obviate such terrible consequences, no other way to
explicate what she had heard than by casting Julia—all unlikely as it seemed—in the repellent light of her cousin’s murderess.
    She stopped by the window, and pulled aside the heavy curtain. It was moonlight, and all before her was solemn and lovely, clothed in the brilliancy of an unclouded summer night. She rested her
face against the pane, and the sensation of the cool glass on her flushed cheeks made her suddenly aware how stifling the room had become. She went across to the door, flung it open, and stood for
a moment on the threshold. The great house was still and noiseless—or was it? She knew her nerves were more than usually agitated, but she thought, for one fleeting instant, that she had
detected a movement in the dark shadows, beyond the wan circle of light cast by the lamp. It was not the first time she had felt such a sensation in recent days, and she suspected Maddox was
deploying his men as spies. Had Stornaway been deputed to listen at Julia’s door, and if he had, what had he heard?
    She wavered for a moment, wondering whether to seek the man out, and challenge him, but a few minutes’ reflection told her that nothing she could do would make any difference, and whatever
the man might have gathered by stealth, would no doubt only serve to confirm what his master had already obtained by violence. She returned into the room with an even heavier heart, and took her
place once again at the bed-side. Julia had recommenced her feverish and confused murmurings, and Mary was so preoccupied, and so fatigued by her many hours of watching, that it was some moments
before she discerned that the tenor of the girl’s ramblings had undergone a subtle but momentous change.
    ‘I can never be free of it—never erase it—never blot it out—that face, those eyes—cannot bear it—pretend I never saw, pretend I never heard—no, no, do
not