As the dawn rose behind Sir Thomas’s woods, the two women began to fancy there was some slight improvement in the girl’s pulse: they waited, watched, and examined it again and again, and when the first rays of sunlight revealed a lightening of the venous darkness that had flooded her face, they dared at last to hope that she might be out of danger. Even Mr Phillips acknowledged a temporary revival, and ventured to give encouraging assurances, but Maddox was not so sanguine; he had seen this flattering symptom before, and knew that all too often it 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 something 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 something 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 18

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 would supply her sister with the sober facts of the case as well as she could do. But if she wished to avoid society in general, she most earnestly sought the company of her brother. He alone would understand something of what she was suffering, and he alone would have the words with which to console her; but a search of the house revealed only that his bed was empty, and his horse gone.

She asked the cook for a dish of tea, and made her way slowly to the privacy of her own room, where she finally gave way to a violent outburst of tears. It was some time before this excess of suffering had spent itself, and even longer before she could trust herself to appear before the Grants in a tolerable ease of mind, so she sent word that she was indisposed and lying down. And lie down she did, though with such a head-ache as precluded all hope of sleep. Never had she wanted the bliss of oblivion more, and never had she more need of it; she knew her impending interview with Charles Maddox would tax all her reserves of watchfulness and caution, and yet she could not quiet her thoughts. Between the horror of Julia Bertram’s senseless and untimely death, and her own unconscious part in it, and the words she had heard from the girl’s own lips, only hours before she died, she could not tell if her heart were more oppressed by sorrow, guilt, fear, or foreboding.


When Maddox arrived shortly after three o’clock, she was sitting in the shrubbery. He saw at once the paleness of her face, and the slight tremor in her hands, and guessed something of what she had been suffering in the hours since dawn. He pitied her, but he could not afford to shew it; she, by contrast, could think of him only in the guise of a man prepared to resort to torture, to intimidate an innocent servant. He would have taken her hand, had she offered it, but she remained seated, and would not catch his eye. He said nothing immediately, but took a seat on the bench beside her.

"I see we do not meet as friends, Miss Crawford. I am at a loss to know how I have so far forfeited your good opinion."

"You have only to search your own conscience, Mr Maddox."

"Even so, I would prefer to hear it from you."

"Really, sir," she said angrily, turning to face him, "do you have no recollection at all of the atrocious way you behaved towards Kitty Jeffries? Setting your brute of an assistant upon her like a dog?"

He sat silent for a moment, and it occurred to her that he had supposed her ignorant of the incident, and was even now debating how best to excuse it. She had never seen him frown before, and she was struck by how much it served to alter his face, as the scar above his eye deepened, and cast shadows along the strong lines of his chin and jaw, sharpening them to an edge. She had known him to be a formidable adversary; now, for the first time, she saw him without the mask of geniality or politeness. It may, perhaps, have been due to her extreme weariness, but she felt the power of his presence as she had never done before; she had been used to condemning him as arrogant and domineering, but now, sitting by him in such close proximity, and after such an experience endured together, she found herself affected in a way that was wholly new to her.

"It was — necessary," he said at length. "Regrettable, but necessary. The girl will take no lasting harm, and I fancy her mistress is already remembering me in her nightly prayers."

Mary gathered her wits, and called to mind why she had been so displeased with him. "Lest you have already forgotten, Mr Maddox, Miss Bertram has this very morning lost her beloved sister."

"My apologies, Miss Crawford, I am properly reprimanded. We are both of us, I suspect, somewhat fatigued. I meant merely to say that Miss Bertram is far from sharing your resentment. She does not approve of the method, any more than you do, but it has been the means of exonerating her from all suspicion, and relieving her mind from an intolerable burden. I see from your expression that you do not know the story. I will be brief.At a certain point during your pleasant little party to Compton, Maria Bertram told her cousin that she wished her dead. She did not know, then, that her sister had overheard these words, and when Mrs Crawford’s body was found, Maria was seized with panic, fearing she would be suspected if the story became known. Her fears were all the greater because she had suffered a nose-bleed while at Compton, and had blood on her dress."

"I remember," said Mary, slowly. "On the journey home she held her shawl close round her shoulders, even though the night was warm."

Maddox nodded. "Thank you for your corroboration, Miss Crawford. This same incident also accounts for Miss Bertram’s inordinate reluctance to consent to a search of her chamber — she knew my men would find that gown, and — "