Murder at Mansfield Park

greater misery of pecuniary distress; I had thought the comforts of rank, position, and money would far outweigh the little inconveniences
of a bitter and spiteful wife, who would forever be reminding me that I had dragged her down from the exalted sphere of life to which she might have aspired. Barely two days in London proved to her
that she might have bought herself a title with a fortune as large as hers, and she never thereafter allowed me to forget it.’
    They walked a little further in silence, before he turned to her. ‘Are you cold, Mary? Your hands are shaking.’
    ‘Our sister will scold,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘I have, as usual, forgotten to bring my shawl. Please, go on.’
    ‘There is not much else to tell. You know my character, Mary—you know my faults, as well as I know them myself. In short, I could not trust myself. Indeed, I should defy any man of
warm spirits and natural ardour of mind to govern his temper in the face of such incessant and violent recriminations. She had raised her hand to me once; I did not stay to be tempted to pay her
back in kind.’
    Mary looked at him in horror, only now comprehending the full import of what he was saying, and how it related to what Maddox had told her. ‘ She raised her hand to you ?’
    He nodded. ‘I do not cut a very manly figure, do I?’ he said, with grim irony. ‘A man beaten about the face by his own wife—how could I hold my head up in public ever
again? I would be laughed out of every club in London, and pilloried for a henpecked husband and emasculated milksop.’ He laughed, but the sound was hollow, and his smile was forced.
    ‘And so, you left her?’ she said, gently.
    ‘To my everlasting shame. She did not leave me, I left her —left her alone in town, where she had no friend but me. My own wife . I only found out that she had
gone when I had a letter from Mrs Jellett, asking me for the money owed on our lodgings. She had presumed—why should she not?—that Fanny had followed me to the address in Drury-lane I
had confided to her. I knew better. I returned to Portman-square, and began to search for her. That part, at least, is true.’
    ‘And Enfield? I still cannot comprehend why you should have chosen to go there.’
    ‘It was the only place I could think of where I might hope for a moment’s peace and solitude—some where I might gain a little breathing time, while I prepared myself to face
the Bertrams.’
    He stopped and turned to face her, his face grey with unease. ‘All I can say is, that it did not seem such an injudicious choice then . But as a consequence I cannot prove I was not
here in Mansfield when she arrived. I cannot prove I did not kill her. I cannot even say—with truth—that I did not want to be free of her; that I did not, in some small and shameful
part of my heart, want her dead. Maddox has his motive, Mary, and he is gaining on me—he is closing in. If he does not soon find the true perpetrator of this crime, I am a dead
man.’

 
    CHAPTER XIX
    Mary went to her bed that night in such an agony of mind as she had never yet suffered. The tumults of the last dreadful weeks were nothing to what she endured now; she had not
known the human mind capable of bearing such vicissitudes. She saw, only too clearly, what she should do; it was not merely her knowledge of her brother that told her he was guiltless, but the
words that she had heard from Julia Bertram’s own lips, and which no-one else would ever hear now, if she herself were not to communicate them. But was she prepared to take such a terrible
step? Was she willing to send the man she loved to certain death on the gallows? Because that, she believed, would be the inevitable consequence of her disclosure. Henry might have more obvious
motives for killing his wife, but she knew that some might consider Edmund Norris to have reasons that were scarcely less cogent, and he, like Henry, had no alibi for the morning of Fanny’s
death. Were Julia Bertram’s last words to become generally known, the evidence against him would appear all but conclusive. It was an appalling prospect: say nothing, and watch her innocent
brother condemned; speak, and see Edmund hang in his place.
    She could not imagine any possibility of sleep, and lay awake for many hours, passing from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror, and from hot fits of fever to cold. But shortly before
two o’clock her bodily weakness finally overcame