Posted on Monday, 30 October 2006
Nine guests, nine people that the hostess, Elizabeth Catherine Elinor Emma Frances Anne Austen, was not particularly fond of, were congregated in the drawing room before dinner. The house they were in was situated on a cliff along the craggy coast of Cornwall, and a storm raged outside. If this had been a century later, surely the electricity would have already gone out, incapable of withstanding the cruelty of nature.
But this was the early 19th century and there was only a fire in the grate and dim candlelight, for which Lady Catherine de Bourgh was grateful. The light was flattering to her crow's feet and frown lines. No one could ever have called them laugh lines, as she had never cracked a smile in her life. A solemn infant, she had become a bossy child before turning into an autocratic adult. Even now she observed her fellow guests through a jeweled lorgnette and found them lacking.
George Wickham, the son of a very respectable man, her late brother's steward, stood at the mantle, blocking any heat she might have derived from the fire, and noticed her glaring at him. He raised his glass of what that pompous dandy, Sir Walter Elliot, had declared a 'superior single malt,' and gave her a silent toast, but did not budge from his cozy spot.
The Thorpe siblings had their heads together earlier, and now that tart, Isabella, had appropriated the seat next to the rakish-looking John Willoughby. That gentleman - if you could call him that - had engaged the chit in some light flirtation. From what she had heard about the pair, they were well-suited to each other. Although she would not put it past Miss Thorpe to end the evening with someone like Wickham or Crawford...
The Crawfords ... Now there was a pair of siblings to rival even the Thorpes in mischief. A pity only the brother was attending the party. She noticed that he was seated with a Miss Steele, whom Lady Catherine had already chalked up as a fortune hunter. A Mrs. Elton rounded out the group.
Come to think of it, everyone in room, herself excluded, of course, had some serious character flaw. How had she come to be here in such company? It was not to be borne!
Remember the money, her mind whispered. Miss Austen promised a very large sum to anyone who could last the night at Penhallow Abbey. Lady Catherine could not turn down the offer any more than the more money-hungry people around her had.
Right before the butler, Hill, announced dinner, Miss Austen, a pretty young woman, made her appearance. Wickham and Willoughby, abandoning Miss Thorpe, fought over whom would pour the lady a sherry. In the meantime, she was accosted by Mr. Thorpe, who was expansive in the praise of his accommodations. When he had exhausted that subject, he recycled his adjectives, applying them toward his hostess. She cut him off finally to greet each of her other guests, beginning with Wickham and Willoughby, taking glasses from each of them and blithely handing the drinks off to Thorpe.
Lady Catherine and Sir Walter were next, followed by Mr. Crawford and the remainder of the ladies.
"There are only nine guests?" Lady Catherine enquired, having already made a head count.
"Miss Bingley declined my invitation," Miss Austen replied, "as did Miss Musgrove and Miss Crawford." She had been surprised, given the ratio of eligible men and the money at stake. "But that makes us an even ten, does it not? I do hate an uneven table."
"I suppose that does make sense. We would make thirteen," Lady Catherine noted with some surprise.
"Yes," Miss Austen agreed with a smile. "And thirteen ghosts is quite another story altogether." She moved on.
After dinner, which was held at a round table, Miss Thorpe and Miss Steele were invited to entertain in the drawing room, but were pre-empted by Mrs. Elton, who claimed her friends said she was quite musical.
When the gentlemen joined them, which was sooner than later, as all of them were rather self-centered and tended to talk at their fellows rather than with them, Miss Austen stood, slips of paper in her hands. Behind her, the fire was dying down.
"Tonight, we are going on a treasure hunt!" she cheerfully addressed the company. Everyone perked up at the notion of finding treasure. "We shall be playing in teams of two."
Some of the younger people looked at each other in anticipation. Miss Thorpe had already singled out Mr. Willoughby as a man who stood to gain a healthy inheritance, in addition to this stay's reward, and she had half a mind to encourage her brother to expound on her many attractions. No one could talk up (or down) a person better than John.
"First couple: Sir Walter Elliot and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Then there will be Mr. Wickham and Miss Steele. Mr. Thorpe, you shall be partnered with Mrs. Elton. Mr. Willoughby, I trust you will take good care of Miss Thorpe? Mr. Crawford, you shall be my partner." Miss Austen handed out papers and sent everyone on their way, with the exception of Mr. Crawford.
"Where do we go, Miss Austen?" he wondered. "Or may I call you Fanny?"
"You may call me whatever you wish, Mr. Crawford. Our instructions take us out to the terrace, where we shall..."
A gust of wind blew in, opening a window with its force and extinguishing all the candles. There was a shriek in the dark and when a frightened Mr. Crawford finally got a taper lit from the softly glowing fire, Miss Austen was gone, a pool of something dark and sticky marking the spot where she had stood. The treasure hunt paper was gone, as well.
"Miss Austen? Elizabeth Catherine Elinor Emma Frances Anne?" he called. There was no answer. Confused, Mr. Crawford went out into the hall. Where should he go now? Should he try to find Miss Austen? She must be hurt and bleeding somewhere. He was unfamiliar with the house, so he sat down in a chair and promptly fell asleep. Someone was bound to come along eventually.
Upstairs, Lady Catherine and Sir Walter had been sent to what appeared to be a bathing room.
"What is the meaning of this?" Lady Catherine demanded. "This room was improperly set up! No shelves! Is that the way to organize a..."
Something - or someone - clapped a dark piece of cloth over Lady Catherine's head and she fainted from fright. When she came to, it was to discover Sir Walter lying face down in the tub, which had been filled with a viscous liquid. The treasure hunt paper was completely soaked. She leaned over, sniffed, and shook her head.
"What a perfectly good waste of Gowland's."
She had no idea what to do with Sir Walter, if anything, and decided to wander back downstairs, where she found Mr. Crawford sleeping in a hall chair.
"Wake up!" She prodded him with her cane. "I say, my partner has just drowned in a vat of Gowland's upstairs."
Mr. Crawford started to his feet with a gasp. "Miss Austen is missing and there is blood in the drawing room."
"Most peculiar. We need a servant to clean up the blood and get the body out of the bath!" She rang for Hill, who failed to appear, leaving her with no choice but to take a chair next to Mr. Crawford.
Mr. Wickham and Miss Steele, finding themselves in a bedchamber, were giving each other a look that had nothing to do with jewels or money. No, the treasure they were hoping to discover was underneath layers of clothing. Knowing they had all night, they indulged themselves and then promptly fell asleep. When Mr. Wickham woke, he was smiling, thinking about Lucy. He rolled over to say something to her and discovered that she was smiling too. The smile of the dead. A large knife protruded from her back.
He screamed, scrambled into his clothes and raced downstairs. Lady Catherine and Mr. Crawford were asleep in their chairs, not having heard his cries.
"Wake up! Wake up! Miss Steele is dead! Stabbed in the back!"
"We must go to her!" Lady Catherine said.
"Er..." Wickham hemmed and hawed, thinking of her compromising position, and not wanting people to think he had done it with a dead woman. "I do not believe that is necessary."
"Wickham is right," Mr. Crawford said. "We should leave the body where it is. Miss Austen, wherever she is, will tend to it."
"I believe we have determined Miss Austen to have disappeared!" Lady Catherine snapped. "Oh, and Sir Walter drowned. So that leaves seven of us."
Not wanting to be implicated in Miss Steele's murder, Wickham took a seat in the hall with the other two.
A crash woke the three snoozing in the hall, and then Mr. Thorpe raced out of the music room, a look of panic on his face.
"Come quick! Mrs. Elton is injured! Or worse!"
Mr. Crawford and Mr. Wickham ran back with him, Lady Catherine bringing up the rear. They found a large pianoforte with the top down and a body protruding from it. A female body, if the skirt hanging off it was any indication, although Lady Catherine knew any number of gentlemen who liked to dress up that way.
"What happened?" she demanded of Mr. Thorpe.
"We were looking in the instrument for our treasure, I was held back by something and then the lid crashed down on Mrs. Elton. I must confess, I am secretly relieved that something finally shut that female up. Yak, yak, yak, it is no wonder her husband sent her here alone. The chap was probably hoping something like this would happen. I need a drink!"
They all wandered back into the drawing room for liquid refreshments, gingerly skirting the puddle of blood that still stained the carpet.
"Miss Austen," Mr. Crawford said matter-of-factly when Wickham stopped to stare at it.
"Sir Walter was drowned," Lady Catherine added morosely.
"And Miss Steele was poked." Wickham could not resist the double entendre.
"Something bad is happening around here," Thorpe said in what Lady Catherine thought was the understatement of the year. "We need to stick together. Who is missing?"
"Your sister and Willoughby," Wickham said, waggling his eyebrows at Thorpe. Hey - if he could score with Miss Steele, there was no doubt in his mind that Willoughby was having an even easier time with Miss Thorpe. That was, until she ran screaming down the stairs, barreling right into Wickham's arms. Neither he nor Miss Thorpe thought that was much of a coincidence.
"Mr. Willoughby!" she said, out of breath, her bosom heaving. He hoped she never caught it.
"No, I am Mr. Wickham."
"No! I mean, Mr. Willoughby! Open window! Flung out! Dashed on rocks! Below!"
"Don't calm yourself, Miss Thorpe," Wickham said for the benefit of himself and Mr. Crawford. "I understand you to say that Willoughby fell out an upper window and landed on rocks below?"
"Attic! Open window!" she exclaimed.
Lady Catherine had enough of the chit's theatrics, pulled some flowers out of a vase and dashed the water into the girl's face. Wickham and Crawford groaned. Now she was both wet and heaving. "Sit down!" she ordered the girl. "I suggest we all stay together."
"There is no way in heck I am going anywhere alone," Crawford said. He had been cozy and alive in his little chair in the hall. "Besides, I do not have a treasure paper anymore. And all I have to do is last the evening and I will have some money."
They all had lost their papers, and they all agreed that if they just sat tight until morning, they would be safe.
That was, until Isabella got hungry.
"I need something to eat. Who wants to come with me to the kitchens to make a sandwich?" she invited, eyeing Wickham and Crawford. They would make quite a tasty treat, she thought, having been deprived of Willoughby in the attic just when things had been getting interesting up there.
Lady Catherine and Mr. Thorpe agreed to go, to the others' disgust, but they had all agreed to stay together, so they trooped down to the kitchens in a tight group.
Mr. Thorpe, investigating the pantry, found a bottle of blue ruin on a shelf and took a quick swig of it while everyone else was searching elsewhere. Much to his surprise, and everyone else's, he fell backwards, dead, at his sister's feet. His lips were blue and he smelled of bitter almonds. Isabella calmly climbed over the top of him and reached for a ham on the shelf above where her brother had found the bottle, bringing it out and calmly slicing it on the wooden table. The others just stood there, glancing from Miss Thorpe to her brother and back, as if they could not believe her to be such a cold-hearted chit.
"Are we going to eat or not?" she finally demanded. Lady Catherine, admiring her spunk, fixed a sandwich, although she stayed away from any liquids. After they ate, they decided to go out the front door to see if there were any lights nearby. Someone should be alerted to the fact that they were all dying at a record pace. Alas, there were no lights, only the howling wind and a blinding rain.
Standing in front of the house, Crawford stepped out from under the portico to see just how the house was situated.
"Mr. Crawford!" Lady Catherine called, alarmed that he was getting wet and would no doubt ruin the leather chairs in the hall when they went inside. "You are going to..."
CRASH! A stone angel, a relic from the days when Penhallow had been a true abbey, had fallen from the roof, crushing Mr. Crawford. They all turned away in disgust and thought perhaps they were safer indoors.
And they would have been, too, if a suit of armor in the entry had not chosen that moment to fall to pieces, its sword piercing Lady Catherine in the jugular vein. Blood squirted everywhere, but the two remaining, Wickham and Isabella Thorpe, looked at each other and grinned.
"We are all alone, Mr. Wickham," she said seductively, her wet gown still clinging to her figure. "Surely we can think of something to do until dawn..."
Wickham licked his lips. "I am certain we can..."
"I will just slip into the study," she suggested. "Give me ten minutes, darling..."
He did, and when he came into the study, there was Isabella, hanging by a rope. That was when Wickham realized he was not alone.
"Who are you?" he asked, shaking in his Hessians.
"You know who I am," Miss Austen said, coming calmly out of the shadows with a piece of paper in her hands. "May I introduce you to my husband, Fitzwilliam Henry Edward George Edmund Frederick Austen?"
A gentleman stepped out from a dark corner, a box under one arm. "Wickham," he said, nodding curtly.
"You!" Wickham gasped.
"Yes, me." A smile that held no humor in it spread slowly across the man's face.
"We have had a busy evening, my dear," Miss (Mrs.!) Austen said to her husband. "I wrote a poem about it, do you wish to hear?"
"By all means," he invited, settling in an easy chair, the box in his lap.
Elizabeth chuckled and sat down next to him, reading from her paper.
"Ten little idiots, getting along just fine..."
"You are calling yourself an idiot, darling," he mentioned.
"So I have!" Lizzy said with a giggle. She continued with her poem, unperturbed.
"Ten little idiots, getting along just fine; one disappeared and then there were nine.
"Nine little idiots, hunting treasure great; one fell into a bathing tub and then there were eight.
"Eight little idiots, thinking life is heaven; one rolled over and then there were seven.
"Seven little idiots, still able to mix; one played the pianoforte and then there were six."
"Amazing how well that rhymes," Fitzwilliam said with admiration.
"I thought so, too," Lizzy agreed. "Shall I continue?"
"By all means."
"Six little idiots, glad to be alive; one went flying and then there were five.
"Five little idiots, unsure now of the score; one turned blue and then there were four.
"Four little idiots, living near the sea; one glimpsed an angel and then there were three.
"Three little idiots don't know what to do; one was knighted and then there were two.
"Two little idiots in here all alone; one lassoed a lover and then there was one."
She paused.
"That's it?" Wickham wondered.
"Oh, I have not finished writing the poem. And when I do, I am afraid I shall have to ascribe this poetic justice to someone else. Such a pity. I thought I quite had the knack of it there..."
Fitzwilliam rose from his chair and set the box on the desk, opening it to reveal a dueling pistol. "You are the only known person left in the house. Elizabeth's paper implicates you in all the other deaths. A Runner is on his way here. Do you want to be alive when he arrives?" he taunted. "There is another way out."
Elizabeth showed Wickham the paper, signed by his own hand, cleverly forged. "You deserve this, you know. How many other young women have you ruined in your life, besides Lydia? Think of poor Georgiana, if my sister does nothing for you. The dear soul will probably never make a good wife. You have ruined her, George Wickham! Do you want that on your conscience?"
"Atone now, Wickham!" Fitzwilliam suggested.
They stepped out of the room and were rewarded with the sound of one pistol shot. When they looked in once more, Wickham had put a period to his existence. Elizabeth picked up a quill and finished off the poem.
"One little idiot, afraid the reaper's come; thinks he is all alone, and then there were none."
They were walking out the back of the abbey, to a hidden cove where their boat would arrive in the morning, just as the Runner entered the front door.