“With alacrity,” I said, and slipped my hand through Lizzy's arm.

“And now, Mr. Collingforth,” Neddie said, as we turned away, “I must ask leave to search your chaise. Stand aside, Mr. Everett!”

“WHAT A CURIOUS LIGHT THIS SHEDS UPON ONE'S neighbours, to be sure.” Lizzy sighed, as her green eyes roved intendy over the equipages drawn up helter-skelter near our own. “There is Mr. Hayes, bustling all his party into a closed carriage, and intent upon his return to Ashford. He will not stay a moment, even in respect of the dead — the chance at seizing a clear road before his fellows is too tempting to be missed. Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton is pretending to an indisposition. See her there, with her kerchief over her face? I suppose I brought on a fit, by descending from my barouche and approaching the corpse. What a comfort that we need not be so nice, when Lady Elizabeth is on display!”

“I admired your activity, Mrs. Austen,” Miss Sharpe said suddenly. “I wished that I might imitate it. That dreadful man required an answer!”

“You observed the lady to enter his chaise as well?”

“Yes,” the governess replied, her eyes averted, “but I did not remark her leaving it. I cannot recollect the slightest instance of her passing, in fact, until the moment that litde Fanny espied her at the rail — mounted on the black horse, and at the very moment of joining the fray. I shall not soon forget that.”

“Nor any of the day's events, I am sure,” Lizzy replied. “It is quite an introduction, Miss Sharpe, to the elegant delights of Canterbury Race Week. I am sure your friends the Portermans will be appalled, when they hear of it, and shall request your immediate return to London.”

Anne Sharpe glanced up at her mistress swiftly, then dropped her eyes once more to the little chapbook.

“I cannot tell the answer to your riddle, Sharpie,” said Fanny fretfully, “and I am very hot and tired. When will Papa be done?”

“In a little while, my dear,” her mother said, “in but a very little while. Lay your head upon my lap, if you choose, and endeavour to sleep.”

While my sister smoothed her daughter's curls, I surveyed the milling crowd.[10] Several of the parties had no intention of awaiting the constabulary, as Lizzy had said. A clutch of horses and harness clogged the gates of the meeting-grounds, and it should be hours, perhaps, before the turf was cleared.

“Tell me of Mr. Collingforth, Lizzy,” I said softly.

“Collingforth? He is of no very great account, I assure you. Nothing to do with the Suffolk family, you know — a lateral heir, in the maternal line, who took the name upon his accession to the property.”

“Yes, yes — but what sort of character does he possess? Is he the sort of man to conceal a fresh corpse in his carriage?”

“I cannot fathom why any man should do so, Jane,” Lizzy retorted in exasperation, “much less contrive to discover it himself. Either he is very simple, or very devious, indeed — and my mind at present is divided between the two.”

“He seems to hate Mrs. Grey.”

She smiled mirthlessly. “Love often turns to hate, I believe — particularly when it is formed of obsessive passion. Six months ago, perhaps, Mr. Collingforth was very much in Mrs. Grey's pocket. But she tired of him, as she does of so many, and sent him on his way.”

“And the affair was countenanced by Society?” I enquired.

“Society, as you would style it, took no notice of either Mrs. Grey or Collingforth. Whatever their form of intimacy, it was quite without the pale of Canterbury fashion. Only Lady Forbes — the wife of the commanding General of the Coldstream Guards — condescended to visit Mrs. Grey after her first weeks in Kent, once the measure of her style had been taken; and Lady Forbes is very young, and cannot be trusted to know any better.”

“I see. You said she tired of any number of gentlemen. A motive, perhaps, for her brutal end?”

“Perhaps.” Lizzy's slanting green eyes rounded upon me. “My brother must be considered one of them, Jane— Mrs. Grey had him quite wrapped around her little finger — and Captain Woodford, of course. He has been intimate from boyhood with Mr. Valentine Grey, and has frequently called at The Larches.”

I glanced at Miss Sharpe's sleek, dark head; her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be dozing. I lowered my voice all the same. “You heard what Mr. Collingforth said of your brother?”

“In company with most of Kent. I wonder where the blackguard has got to? I would dearly love to know what Collingforth meant by accosting him in that fashion, just before the body was discovered. There is something ugly between them, and Woodford, too, if I am any judge of appearances; and such things are so tiresome when they are thrown in the public eye. How I long to shake brother Edward until his teeth rattle in his head!”

Our interesting discourse was broken at that moment by the arrival of the Canterbury constabulary, come at a gallop, it seemed, from town. They brought in their train a waggon draped in black; I knew it at once for a makeshift hearse.

Neddie strode to meet them; consulted, for a moment, with the man who seemed to be their principal; and this last commenced to bark out orders, dispatching some of his fellows in one direction, and some in another. A few made immediately for the Collingforth chaise.

Mr. Wood, the surgeon, placed his arm under Mrs. Grey's neck, and raised her slightly from the ground. The constables gathered at waist and feet. Neddie looked on, his arms folded across his chest and a line of care etched between his brows. And then Mrs. Grey, her unbound black hair sweeping over the surgeon's arm, was carried slowly to the black-draped waggon. The tide of the curious parted like a guard of honour, and not a whisper or a sigh was heard, as the men struggled forward with their unhappy burden.

“I should like to go home, Pratt,” Lizzy said quietly into the stillness. “Let us learn what Mr. Austen intends, and then seek the road without delay.”

“Very good, ma'am,” the coachman replied. He jumped from the box at once — as he had been longing to do for some time, I am sure — and sought out his master.

Neddie returned with Pratt in a moment.

“There is nothing more for you to do here, Lizzy,” he said. “Return to Godmersham with our party, and order a cold supper for Henry and myself. We shall be upon the road some hours, I fear. I ride even now towards The Larches, in the hope that something has been discovered of the missing phaeton.”

“Of course,” she said dismissively. “Jane and I shall both sit up against your return. But, Neddie—”

“Yes?”

“Can not you tell us something of how Mrs. Grey died?”

“She was throttled with her own hair-ribbon.”

“That much I had discerned. But the chaise! How did she come to be there?”

He shook his head. “I could find nothing within that might reveal her history. It is an ugly business — Mrs. Grey being what she is.”

“A Frenchwoman?” I concluded.

He nodded. “The danger of her nationality alone should have counselled a greater propriety of behaviour at such a time — but she was never very restrained, as I am sure you observed, and that may have excited the hatred or jealousy of any number of men. I hope to know more once I have seen her husband; but that cannot be until tomorrow.”

“You believe her killing an act of war, then?”

“In such times as these, with all of Kent in an uproar over the Monster's invasion, I cannot think it extraordinary. She must have been killed on the road, in a chance encounter, when she was quite alone and defenceless. But how she came to be in Collingforth's chaise—”

I gazed pensively at the constables' waggon and its tragic burden. Mr. Wood, the surgeon, had elected to attend the body, and was mounted on the box. Beside me, Miss Sharpe had completed the repacking of the picnic hamper, and Fanny was settled on the seat next to Lizzy. All around us the festive air of a race-meeting was fled, and a line of carriages lengthened towards the Canterbury road. The sedate assemblage of Kentish folk seemed the very last to harbour a political assassin; but other passions might be nearer at hand.