“I can walk without difficulty,” I assured her as the party of villagers joined us—sans Mr Davis, who had stayed to help the other men. The women were chattering excitedly and, I was happy to say, more as if it had all been an adventure than any true ordeal. But then, I have always felt that these women, most of whom worked dawn to dusk in their trades, were far more resilient than many hothouse flowers amongst the ton.
“Mrs Darcy, you were heroic!” Miss Bickford exclaimed, to the enthusiastic agreement of her compatriots. “Such madness! You saved us, gaining time for our rescuers to discover our plight. We could not have imagined a better champion!”
“That she is,” Mrs Reynolds agreed. “However, the master will not be pleased if we keep her standing out here in the sun whilst she is injured.”
The ladies immediately expressed their compassionate concern. While guests in my home, they had been assaulted and abused and subjected to great danger, and yet there was nothing of blame or outrage. It touched me deeply.
“I am so happy you are all safe. Now tell me: what have they done with Mr Wickham?”
As we walked towards Mr Williams’s home, they told me of how the steward had personally dragged Wickham out of the burning ballroom, ordering him roped and bound over for justice. The scoundrel would sit in a gaol cell until the quarter-day, when he would be answering the magistrate’s enquiries, rather than Mr Darcy.
And because they deserved to know the rest of the story, when they questioned what Mrs de Bourgh had meant by her words regarding Anne’s ‘leap’, and of what she had ‘had to do’ because Mr Darcy would not, I explained most of it—at least the part about Anne’s pretended suicidal drop off the terrace whilst angry at her husband, her foolhardy attempt to climb back up again, and the subsequent fall that had broken her. “She would, most likely have died regardless,” I said. “She could not have lived long if her back was broken, I do not believe.”
“So she begged Mr Darcy to finish the job?” Miss Bickford, ever bold, demanded.
“Mr Darcy could not commit such an act,” I said. “As it was a festival day, with few servants about, Mr Darcy ran to the stables himself to have Mr Simpson fetched. When he returned with a litter and assistance, she was at the bottom of the cliff, already dead. Until today, we had no clue as to how she’d fallen the rest of the way.” I saw no need to mention Mr Williams’s presence.
Everyone was silent in contemplation, understanding, finally, the choices Mr Darcy had faced. To declare his wife a suicide, denying her a proper burial for what was, after all, an accident? To seek out another responsible for what had been meant, most likely, as a merciful act?
“It was a terrible thing,” Miss Bickford said. “I would believe the old lady was driven mad with the guilt of it, but I heard her words. She as much as admitted to killing poor Miss Bingley, and without an ounce of regret. I cannot pretend to mourn her.”
I was silent as we walked into the embracing warmth of Mr William’s well-situated cottage. I accepted that we would never truly know who had killed Miss Bingley. Doubtlessly Mrs de Bourgh would have taken responsibility for the murder, whether or not it had been herself or Anne who accomplished it; I was certain the plan to have the Kroffords depart suddenly and suspiciously and thus obscure her disappearance was purely Mrs de Bourgh’s idea. In my heart, I will always believe Anne the most likely perpetrator of an impulsive murder—as demonstrated by the shallow grave too close to the house and my knowledge of the two impetuous, temperamental, and spoilt women involved. Only Anne would have used Mr Darcy’s blade and flaunted it, whereas the more devious Mrs de Bourgh, to my mind, might have preferred to carefully replace the blade in its accustomed spot as if it had never been removed. But this was all conjecture—for all I knew, they dug the grave together.
In all the ways that mattered, however, it was unimportant. In life they had acted as one; even if Anne were the murderess, her mother had hidden the truth and protected her from any consequences. They were two halves of a whole, and without Anne, Mrs de Bourgh was only half a person. I firmly believed her guilty of setting the Thorncroft fire, thinking to destroy whatever evidence might have been inside it of Anne’s terrible life. She had come to Pemberley intending to die today; she had only hoped to bring me with her, and leave Mr Darcy without home or wife—alone, as she had been.