Murder at Mansfield Park

proved to be but the
harbinger of a final and more fatal crisis; he did his best to keep the women from indulging the expectation of an amendment that might never come, but he could not dissuade them. Within the hour
the girl’s breathing began to slow, until there was a considerable interval between the successive inspirations, and a cold sweat had broken out over her body; and then the pulse that had
shewn such a decided improvement began to diminish gradually in fullness and strength. Mrs Baddeley could not be shaken from the hopes that had been so cruelly raised, but Maddox knew that they had
laboured in vain, and he saw that Mary Crawford knew it too.
    Julia Bertram died at exactly fifteen minutes after five o’clock, as by her watch on the table.
    Mrs Baddeley burst at once into a torrent of grief, kissing the girl’s hands, and raising them to her own face, and sighing as if her heart would burst. ‘I never thought to see her
depart this world before me—I used to dance her on my knee when she was a tiny child, and I thought one day I would do the same with her own babes, when she became a wife. But that will never
be. Oh my sweet, sweet lady!’ she sobbed, murmuring some other words, which her tears made inarticulate. And then, as if recollecting herself, ‘Forgive me, sir. I am quite overcome, as
you would be yourself if you had known the poor dear young lady as I did, and as Miss Crawford did. And after all the other terrible things to have befallen this family—what will her ladyship
and Mr Bertram have to say? And poor Sir Thomas, when he returns?’
    ‘As to that, I will answer,’ said Maddox gently, raising her to her feet. ‘You would do best to take some rest and endeavour to restore your enfeebled spirits. I will have them
send up chocolate and some thing nourishing to eat, but I charge you to speak to no-one—not even your husband—of what has occurred here this night, and remain in your room until I send
for you.’
    Mr Phillips was not long in following the housekeeper from the room, and as he prepared to depart, Maddox laid upon him the same injunction with which he had dismissed Mrs Baddeley.
    ‘You will appreciate that I must demand absolute secrecy as to the true cause of this piteous event. As far as the family are concerned, for the moment, this was merely the sad culmination
of many weeks of previous indisposition. When the time is right, and only then, I will divulge the truth. You know, as well as I do, Mr Phillips, that the contamination of that cordial was
calculated and deliberate, and that being so, I now have another murder to resolve at Mansfield Park, and by the same hand as the first. I must condition for the broadest possible freedom of
movement and decision if I am to find the man responsible, and bring him to justice. I trust we understand one another?’
    Mr Phillips nodded, and with a curt bow, took his leave. Maddox turned to Mary Crawford, who was sitting silently in the window-seat.
    ‘And you, Miss Crawford? Do you agree to the same terms?’
    She said nothing, and fixed her eyes instead on the sunlight now streaming across the lawns, and touching the woods with gold. It occurred to him that the repugnance he had seen in her
countenance the evening before, when he had first entered the room, and which had vanished in the face of the far more pressing need to sink their differences for the sake of her friend, had now
returned with renewed vigour. There was some thing else, too, beyond her immediate and understandable anguish, to which he could not yet put a name; but whatever had occasioned it, there were
questions he would have to ask, and they could not wait.
    ‘I need to speak to you, Miss Crawford, and in private, but perhaps it would be best if we were both to take some repose and refreshment. With your permission, I will call at the parsonage
this afternoon.’
    And with that, he was gone.

 
    CHAPTER XVIII
    It was as much as Mary could do to summon the strength to walk back across the park to the parsonage. The ordeals of a day and night passed in such exertion were nothing to her
grief and exhaustion of mind; her limbs were trembling, and she was faint and giddy from a want of proper rest and food. It was too early to expect her sister or Dr Grant to be up, and she was glad
to be spared the necessity of lengthy explanations, in which she would be obliged to conceal as much as she revealed, trusting that the Mansfield gossips