Murder at Mansfield Park

Portman-square, and it is not a pretty story she had to tell. There were vehement arguments almost from the day they moved in—arguments loud enough to wake the rest of the house, and to make
Mrs Jellett apprehensive for the reputation of her establishment. And that, I am sorry to say, was not all. The day before Mr Crawford departed—without settling their bills—there was a
quarrel of such ferocity that Mrs Jellett was constrained to call the constable. She saw the marks of violence with her own eyes. And yet he told me—as he no doubt told you —that
they were happy.’
    He watched her for a moment, awaiting a response, but she kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead.
    ‘All things considered, Miss Crawford,’ he said at last, ‘I believe my enquiries are nearing their conclusion. Having spoken to you, I am more and more confident of that. An
event is imminent. Yes indeed, an event is imminent.’
    Henry did not return from his ride for some hours, and the shadows were lengthening across the parsonage lawn, when Mary at last heard the sound of a horse in the stable-yard.
Her sister had tried in vain to induce her to come indoors and take some rest, and had only with the greatest reluctance been persuaded to return to the house. Mary walked to the archway that led
from the drive to the yard, and stood watching Henry, as he dismounted. He had provided himself with a black coat and arm-band, and she saw at once, and with inexpressible pain, that the assumption
of formal mourning appeared to have deprived him of his quick, light step, and the poised and confident air that had so distinguished him in the past; he seemed weary to his very soul, and when he
looked up and saw her, she knew from his face that the same desperate weariness was also visible in her own.
    ‘Will you walk with me, Henry? Mr Maddox has been here.’
    He looked at her, and then nodded gravely. ‘Of course. But take care how you talk to me. Do not tell me any thing now, which Mr Maddox would not want you to disclose. I would not
wish you entangled in my own difficulties any more than is absolutely necessary. I would protect you from that, even if I can do nothing else.’
    She sighed. ‘I do believe he spoke to me with the express intent that I should convey every word of it to you. The more I see of him, the more I think this to be the most insidious of all
his schemes. He issues information, little by little, here and there, and then sits back to watch how it takes its effect—how we behave, what we do, what we say. It is as if we are all his
puppets—mere clockwork toys, or pawns on a chessboard he can manoeuvre at his pleasure.’
    ‘In that case,’ said Henry, with a gloomy smile, ‘I cannot be afraid of hearing any thing you wish to say. Do not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.’
    It was not long in the telling. The death of Julia Bertram, the suspicions of Maddox, and the news from London, were all told in a very few words. Such was the sympathy between brother and
sister, so deep their mutual love and understanding, that she needed only to relate the facts, for him to comprehend all that she had suffered, and all that she now feared.
    When she had finished, he drew her arm through his, as they walked, and she could see that he was troubled.
    ‘I do not know what pains me more, Mary: the grief you are feeling on account of Julia Bertram, or my own shame at having lied to you.’ He flushed. ‘In that respect, if no
other, Maddox told you the truth—which is more than I can say on my own account. I did lie about being at Ferrars’s place, but I did so because I did not want to put you in an invidious
position, by asking you, in your turn, to conceal where I really was from our sister and the Bertrams. And I lied about the true state of relations between myself and Fanny because—well,
because I was ashamed. Embarrassed and ashamed—that is the truth of it. I did not want to admit that a course of action I undertook from motives of sheer mercenary selfishness, and which has
injured so many, did nothing but bring misery on her, and humiliation on myself. When all the excitement of the intrigue was over, a few—a very few—days were sufficient to teach me a
bitter lesson. I learned to value sweetness of temper, purity of mind, and excellence of principles in a wife, because I knew by then I would never find them in the woman I had married. I had
thought such qualities insignificant compared to the far