Chapter 3

Mrs. Sanders, a widow of indeterminate age who had lived in Meryton for as many years as her husband had been deceased, had let several of her upstairs rooms to officers from the militia quartered in Meryton. Among the officers billeted there for winter had numbered the late Mr. Denny, who had occupied the small room on the east end of the house.

His quarters were cozy, if minimal: a small bed, a table with a wash basin and a vase of wilting flowers, a rickety writing desk, and some pegs on the wall for his things. At the end of the bed sat a weathered trunk.

It was at the trunk Mr. Bennet now stood, methodically removing items and examining them for any significance before tossing them haphazardly on the bed. Elizabeth remained at the door, listening to Mrs. Sanders bemoan the loss of her boarder.

“He was a fine young gentleman,” she sniffed into her handkerchief. “Not like Mr. Chamberlayne, who can give some queer starts at times, or Mr. Saunderson, who is quite the most untidy person I have ever encountered. Just a perfectly normal, well-mannered young man. I don’t know what the world is coming to, that a gentleman in the fit of his prime can up and get murdered at a fancy party like that. A body isn’t safe anywhere these days.”

Elizabeth murmured something comforting, and Mrs. Sanders continued on about the Ratcliffe Highway murders and highwaymen and her brother’s occasioning to having caught a thief once and the chicken thief that had troubled the area five years previous until it was found out to be a neighborhood dog… until Mr. Bennet, with some asperity, asked if she might be so kind as to bring them a pot of tea. With a curtsey, Mrs. Sanders went on her errand, closing the door sharply behind her.

“It is not as if she had anything of use to tell us,” Mr. Bennet said to Elizabeth’s chastening look.

“Well, we shall now have no occasion to find that out, as you have ostracized us from her goodwill,” she replied, taking over his place at the bed after Mr. Bennet snorted and went to the little writing desk to try his luck there. “Or perhaps I shall merit her pity, having a father so insensible to the concerns of us poor womenfolk.”

“I wish you well in it,” the aforementioned father replied. He picked up some correspondence and set to scanning it.

Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed, pulled out her notebook and pencil, and began inventorying the items spread out on the coverlet, dropping each possession into the trunk again after it made its appearance in her list. For a while they worked in silence until Mr. Bennet, with a noise indicating some interest, sat down on the little chair. He stood up again quickly to adjust the leg that had nearly fallen off of it, but then reseated himself gingerly and laid the little book he was reading on the desk. He drew his finger over several lines, his brow furrowed, began to sit back in the chair, and then thought better of it and turned instead to his daughter. “Do you happen to know the income of a lieutenant of the militia, my dear?”

She was forced to declare her ignorance on such a matter.

“From all I had understood, it did not run in the hundreds each year, much less be so irregular as this passbook seems to indicate. While the military of this fine nation may have problems with its supply line that make it difficult to pay its soldiers or with its bureaucracy to pay their widows, the wilds of Hertfordshire should have no such dangers.”

Elizabeth watched her father think for a while, and then said, “You mentioned his father was a baronet, presumably of some wealth. Could it be an allowance from his parents?”

Mr. Bennet tapped his lips thoughtfully. “It is a possibility, as is rents from his estate, but the irregularity of deposits would belie that. As well, the notations here, which may be initials or perhaps another form of code, would lead one’s thoughts in a different direction.”

They fell into silence, and before long Elizabeth returned to her inventory. It was a relatively small collection of items: a few books, clothes, a miniature of a handsome woman from an earlier time, a bundle of yellowed letters. She was surprised, however, when, upon opening a little velvet box, she discovered a finely crafted silver ring with a large sapphire stone.

At her exclamation, Mr. Bennet put Mr. Denny’s little black book in his coat pocket and came over to examine her find. “My goodness,” he murmured, holding it up to the light streaming through the small window. Then he peered closer. “Paste, I think, but the setting is very fine. Mr. Denny did have quite a collection of jewelry I would not have expected of a bachelor, and a younger son. But with such a ring in his possession, perhaps he was not intending to be a bachelor much longer?”

Elizabeth cast her mind back over everything she had ever heard of Mr. Denny, but could not recall any news of entanglements. She also could not name a young lady of the neighborhood to whom he had been paying any particular attention. “Again, I think that might be a question for my Aunt Phillips.”

“I should hate for this pattern to continue and be forced to amend my impression of your aunt to think her indispensable,” Mr. Bennet said, “but I agree with your plan.”

He then returned to the desk, where he opted to stand rather than risk the chair, and continued to sort through the paperwork. Elizabeth watched him for a few moments, cogitating on all of these new pieces of the puzzle of Mr. Denny, before returning to her list. It was not long before she was down to the last item on the bed, and she wondered idly if Mrs. Sanders had forgotten about them and their request for a pot of tea.

She was just about to mention this to her father when the door suddenly opened. She looked up, expecting to see Mrs. Sanders with the tea tray as if she had summoned her with her thoughts, but was instead surprised to see a tall man in the garb of an officer of the militia slip lightly into the room. His face was averted as he peered down the hall, cautiously closing the door with as little sound as possible. It was only when he turned the handle and the lock sprang that he turned to the rest of the room, only to step back and bump into the door, shocked, as he spotted the other occupants.

“Miss Bennet!” he said in squeaky surprise. He cleared his throat and tried again, a bit more smoothly, even as his eyes darted in curiosity to the other man in the room: “Miss Elizabeth Bennet, how very surprising to encounter you here. I hope you are well?”

Elizabeth, who had a little more time to accustom herself to the confusion of his appearance, merely raised a brow and replied, “Very well, thank you. Father, may I present to you Mr. George Wickham, lieutenant of the --- Militia and late of Derbyshire? I believe I have mentioned him to you before.”

Mr. Bennet did not say a word, but accepted the introduction with a nod to the lieutenant, who swallowed hard and seemed for a moment to struggle for words.

Elizabeth could not fathom the reason for his appearance here. She remembered, now, that Mr. Denny had been Mr. Wickham’s introduction to the militia, that they were together when they’d first met in the streets of Meryton. Exactly how close friends were they, that Mr. Wickham felt secure in coming into his friend’s room only the morning after his death? And for what purpose? It seemed very suspicious, but given what Elizabeth had believed of his overall character, she could only hope there must be a reasonable explanation.

“My father is the magistrate for the region, Mr. Wickham,” Elizabeth explained. “We are looking into Mr. Denny’s things in the hopes of learning more about him and finding a motive for his death. You did hear, I assume, of his unfortunate passing last evening?”

Mr. Wickham bowed his head sorrowfully. “Indeed, I did. There was little else anyone was talking about when I returned from my errand in London this morning.”

“And so you rushed to his rooms to seek the truth?” Mr. Bennet asked with scarcely a note of sarcasm.

Something flashed in Mr. Wickham’s eyes, but he merely crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head casually to the side. “On the contrary. I did not doubt the truth of my fellow officers' words, and have been commiserating with them this hour past, at least. Mr. Denny and I had known each other for some years and we were good friends. It was he who recommended me to this position.”

Mr. Bennet narrowed his eyes for a moment, but then shrugged and directed his attention back to the things on the desk, dismissing Mr. Wickham from his notice. The latter cleared his throat awkwardly, shifted his weight, and then turned his attention to Elizabeth. “I hear your sister was the one who discovered the... ah, that is, found ... my friend. Outside the ballroom. Dare I hope that she has recovered from the shock?”

“Indeed, sir,” Elizabeth said with a nod, closing her notebook in her lap and stroking it sadly. “Lydia was inconsolable last night when it happened, but she is resting now under the direction of our local apothecary. I believe she will need time to come to terms with what she encountered there.”

“Indeed. So she has not talked of it to anyone? As those of us who are soldiers know, often speaking of a terror can lessen its hold upon us.”

“I daresay you are correct, and perhaps some day she will be brave enough to speak of it, but I am sure she will need much time to recover first. As bold and unafraid as she can sometimes seem, she is still barely fifteen years of age. She is young yet and such a horror cannot but affect her deeply. It is good of you to think of her, sir.”

Mr. Wickham nodded reflectively. After a moment he appeared ready to ask something more, but Mr. Bennet interrupted him with impatience at all this chatter, asking for his purpose in coming to his friend’s rooms.

“Well, you see,” Mr. Wickham replied, “the truth is that some weeks ago I had lent Denny a book, and I was concerned it might be tossed together with his things and not be returned to me. It has a particular sentimentality for me, and I should be very disappointed with its loss.”

“Ah,” Mr. Bennet said, nodding. “Someone who appreciates literature. We quite possibly have come across it; what book is it?”

“A book of some poetry,” Mr. Wickham answered carelessly. “It’s a small book, fairly thin, with a dark leather cover and embossed with a crest.”

Elizabeth looked at her father in question, but he merely shook his head slowly. “I have not seen a book of poetry. My dear, have you come across such a book in Mr. Denny’s chest?”

“I have not, father,” she replied. “There were several books, and one of them the poetry of Wordsworth, but it had a blue cover.”

Mr. Wickham seemed dismayed. “Alas, I hoped he had not lost it or lent it to someone else. Perhaps I might check his desk?” He moved forward, then stopped and retreated as he realized he’d overstepped. “No, I suppose you have already looked there.”

“I am afraid I have gone through everything here,” Mr. Bennet acknowledged. “It’s a pity we could not find the book you describe. But perhaps Mr. Denny might have had something else you sought?” Without looking over at Wickham, whose face had turned a dull red, he casually slid a few slips of paper out from beneath the stack of correspondence and fanned them out in front of him. He ran his finger across them until he came to one and removed it, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. Over it, he met Wickham’s eye. “Perhaps, a particular item that might have your name on it and a surprisingly large number of pounds for a mere lieutenant to possess -- or, as it were, not possess?”

The flush that had stolen into Mr. Wickham’s cheeks retreated as quickly as it had come, his face taking on a slightly ashen hue in its wake, but he said not a word. His eyes cast a quick glance in Elizabeth’s direction, but she purposefully looked down at her inventory.

“Most gentlemen, I think, would not pursue the gambling debits or credits of a dead man,” Mr. Bennet said musingly. “Of course, were there a widow or children, it would be expected of a gentleman to pay the debt so as to give support to the unfortunate dependents -- but that is not, I understand, something of importance in this matter, as Mr. Denny appeared to be a bachelor. And yet it is still good form to pay off your vowels. It is certainly not good form to try to conceal that there were debts at all. It would almost make one draw the conclusion that one did not have the money to pay them.” He lifted a single eyebrow at the younger man. “But that is not the case here, is it?”

The other man pursed his lips and replied haughtily, “Indeed, it is not. As I said earlier, I only stopped by to see if Denny still had the book I had lent him. As he did not leave it with his things, I can only hope he returned it to my rooms and neglected to tell me, perhaps whilst I was in town. I shall go and check there.”

Mr. Bennet nodded sagely. “Your plan is a good one,” he said, and waved the younger man out of the room. Having dismissed Mr. Wickham, he turned again to bundle the papers together on the desk, and then dumped them atop the rest of Mr. Denny’s other things in the trunk. Elizabeth grimaced at this disregard for her organization, but said not a word as she closed the lid and secured the straps.

Mr. Wickham cast one last longing glance at the trunk, then bowed tightly, made his farewells to Elizabeth, and left the room, closing the door behind him with an angry snap.

It was several minutes before either Bennet said a word.

“I am disappointed in him,” Elizabeth said.

“That he gambles, my dear?”

“That he lies,” she replied.

Mr. Bennet shrugged. “It’s a little of the same thing. The only difference is in the stakes. But the question we must ask ourselves is what, precisely, was he gambling on the truth about? Now, let us have Thomas up to fetch this trunk, and I shall take it with me to London on the morrow. No sense leaving it lying about so that just anyone can find whatever book they like in it. Ready, Lizzy?”

She acknowledged that she was, and they left the room in time to run into Mrs. Sanders, coming up the stairs at last with a tray for tea.

“By the by, Lizzy,” Mr. Bennet said as they were in the carriage some time later on the return to Longbourn, “how is your sister Jane’s handwriting? Do you think it might be sufficient for taking notes tomorrow?”

Elizabeth laughed as she caught the thread of his thoughts. “You wouldn’t, by chance, be considering taking not myself but rather Jane with you to London to interview Mr. Denny’s parents and the other guests from the ball, would you? I suppose I should not take affront and instead ascribe the reason to your mode of transport.”

Mr. Bennet looked innocent. “I only thought you might be better employed here, speaking with your aunt and her cronies. It certainly has nothing to do with my dreading finding anything at all to speak of to that young cub for the length of a journey to Town. Or, more accurately, that he might find nothing else to do but talk to me.”

“And you don’t think Mr. Bingley might object to another passenger?”

“Quite the reverse,” Mr. Bennet demurred with a twinkle in his eye. “In fact, I had barely expressed the thought last night that I might have to travel to Town with one of my daughters before he offered me the use of his carriage. I do believe he was quite eager to be of service.”

“Oh, Papa,” Elizabeth sighed. “Do be cautious with Jane. She does feel deeply, you know, and she has not my familiarity with your teasing.”

Mr. Bennet patted his daughter’s hand. “There, there, my dear. You can trust your father to wade those tricky waters of unspoken courtship. I shall not tease them about it above twice.”