“Thank you, Mr. Papillon,” I replied with a curtsey. “I am sure my mother would join me in thanks, did she know of your concern.”

“—And stolen, it seems, by poor Bertie Philmore! It is a dreadful business, when one of our fellow creatures falls in the way of temptation. We must certainly pray for him.”

“Are you at all acquainted with the Philmores? I had understood them to be Alton people.”

“And so they are, in the main — but Old Philmore, Bertie’s uncle, is quite the Chawton institution. He is landlord to Miss Benn, you know, and a rare old character. I wonder that he did not appear in front of your home last evening, to intercede for his nephew. It is not like Old Philmore to preserve a respectful silence, when one of his own is in danger of hanging for murder!”

“Perhaps he is from home at present.”

“Then it will be the first time he has shaken off our dust in the eight years I have lived here,” Mr. Papillon observed. “I must send Elizabeth to Old Philmore’s cottage, and make certain he is not unwell. It would be a dreadful thing, if he were lying alone on his cot, suffering from some disorder, while Bertie is in want of a steady hand and counsel!”

“Are the two men very attached?”

“Old Philmore has served Bertie in place of a father these many years. Indeed, they are most devoted — in the rough, unschooled fashion of their kind. I could wish for the younger man a kinder example, perhaps — Old Philmore is very close with his money, quite the miser of Chawton, as Miss Benn has found! — but in truth, there is no real harm in either of them.”

“I see.” It was possible I saw a great deal more, in fact, than the rector. Old Philmore had been absent from the scene of Bertie’s arrest. What better confederate for the younger man than the trusted figure of the uncle? Complicity within the family would surely ensure Bertie’s silence in the hands of the Law; and if Mr. Papillon’s opinion of their bond was to be believed, Bertie was unlikely to incriminate Old Philmore.

“It is decidedly odd,” Mr. Papillon mused, “that we have heard nothing of Old Philmore this morning. I should have expected him to have paid me a visit, with the earnest desire that I should bring the air of Christian charity to his nephew’s gaol cell, as indeed I shall before the day is out.”

The old scoundrel, I thought with sudden heat, was probably miles from Chawton even now, and my chest with him. I left the rector pulling off his paper cuffs, and finished my walk in pensive silence. I could not reconcile myself to the loss of Lord Harold’s papers; it was too much like losing the man himself, all over again.

At my return to the cottage I was surprised to discover Catherine Prowting waiting upon the doorstep with a cheerful, plain-faced young woman of perhaps twenty by her side.

“Good morning, Miss Austen,” Catherine said. “My father has charged me with bringing Sally Mitchell to you, and offering you her services as maid of all work. She is a good girl, reared in the village; her mother is our cook.”

Sally Mitchell bobbed a curtsey. Tho’ young, her hands were roughened and red from hard labour, and her general appearance was of tidy cleanliness — positive signs in a domestic servant. Her dress had been neatly mended, and her half-boots were in good repair.

“I should have first consulted Mrs. Austen,” Catherine said apologetically, “but that I knew her to be steadily at work in the garden, and did not wish to intrude.”

I stood on tiptoe to overlook the hornbeam hedge, and observed my mother busily digging in the field beyond the privy. She wore an old green sack gown and a battered straw hat, and tho’ all of seventy, was turning the earth with a vigour that belied her years. She might have been taken, in fact, for one of her son’s tenants. Could the prospect of planting potatoes have excited such ardent activity? Of Cassandra there was no sign; she was probably lying down in the bedroom with the shades drawn, after the exhausting journey by post-chaise from Kent. I must therefore interview the girl alone.

“Good day to you, Sally,” I said. “Have you heard that this house is cursed?”

A startled look passed over her features, and then she opened her mouth wide and laughed. “Many’s the time I’ve sat in Widow Seward’s kitchen, and had a biscuit of her Nancy, begging your pardon, ma’am,” she said. “This here house is no more cursed nor what I am. I daresay it could do with a good scrubbing, however.”

“Do you wish to live in, or out, Sally?”

“In,” she said succinctly, “if it’s all the same to you, ma’am.”

“Better and better! We have two bedrooms over the kitchen reserved for the purpose. You have heard, I suppose, that our parlour window was broken and some articles taken from the house last night?”

“Bertie Philmore,” she returned acidly, “what has a great lump for a brain. But he’s got what’s coming to ’im, so I’ve heard.”

“It would greatly relieve our minds to have you living above the kitchen, all the same. I shall consult my mother as to your wages; you shall receive your board as well — and probably be cooking it. We expect another lady to join us next month, a Miss Lloyd; and as she is a great one for meddling with pots and fires, I hope you shall not mind another pair of hands in your domain.”

“It’s not my place to mind.”

“We intend, moreover, to hire a manservant, if one can be found who shares your spirit of defiance. It is probable that he will be living out. ”

Her eyelids crinkled merrily. “That will suit me very well, ma’am.”

“You’ll do.”

Sally grinned at me again; and the thought occurred that I should often find the freedom of her good humour a welcome relief from the moods and oppressions of a household full of women.

“Pray go through the yard to the pump,” I told her. “You will see the kitchen door on your right. We should be greatly obliged if you would undertake a thorough cleansing of the scullery area, Sally — and then proceed to dusting the parlour.”

When she had bobbed in my direction once more, and made her way through the outbuildings towards the rear of the house, I turned to Catherine Prowting with a smile. “You are very good to think of us, my dear. I hope you will convey our deepest thanks to your excellent father.”

“I shall certainly do so,” she returned, in a voice of some trouble; “when next I see him. Father went very early to Alton, on this dreadful business of Bertie Philmore. Papa will not consider that the man may be innocent of murder.”

“A predisposition towards guilt is a definite flaw in a magistrate,” I observed.

“I own that I am of your opinion.” Catherine lifted her hands to her temples, as tho’ yet plagued by the head-ache. “Is it true that we are all invited to visit Stonings tomorrow, Miss Austen?”

“So Major Spence and Mr. Thrace informed me, when I encountered them this morning.”

“Mr. Thrace? I had not the pleasure of seeing the Great House party.” She lowered her head. “Do you know whether. whether Mr. Hinton is also invited to Stonings?”

“I do not,” I replied, “although from something Miss Beckford said, I believe he is otherwise engaged.”

“That is a relief, indeed!” she burst out. “I may now look forward to all the charms of a great estate, without the oppression of spirits under which I have laboured these several days!”

I frowned at her. “Catherine, has Mr. Hinton given you cause for uneasiness?”

She glanced at me, on the brink of confidence. “I hardly know what I should say. I fear my duty is to my father, first. But perhaps, Miss Austen — if you are free — we might walk in the direction of Alton together? I should like to unburden myself. I should feel clearer in my mind.”

“Of course,” I murmured. “Do but wait, while I fetch my bonnet.”

“Well, Jane,” my mother said as I nearly collided with her in the back passage, her face dewy with exertion and the hem of her old green gown six inches deep in mud, “I have made a fair start on the excavations. I cannot report that I have encountered success, however. It will require some days, perhaps.”