Page 10 of Love Among the Shadows
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The news of Mr Thomas Granger’s death swept through Meryton and the neighbouring villages with astonishing rapidity, as though borne upon the very winds. By evening, the townsfolk spoke of little else, and the grim occurrence had acquired a new and chilling sobriquet: “the Mr Darcy curse.” It seemed that the events surrounding the enigmatic gentleman had sparked a fervour of speculation and dread. The prevailing rumour held that crossing swords—figuratively speaking—with Mr Darcy was tantamount to courting death.
At the market stalls, the modiste’s shop, the botanical garden, and every other gathering place, voices rose and fell in heated debate. Some declared that Mr Darcy ought to be made to leave town without delay, lest more tragedy ensue. Others,less impetuous but still wary, argued that while the two deaths were indeed suspicious, no conclusion could yet be drawn, as the investigations remained incomplete. A minority scoffed at the notion entirely, dismissing it as the product of overactive imaginations, while an even smaller faction deemed it utter folly to entertain the idea of a “curse” simply because two men who had argued with Mr Darcy had later turned up dead.
Elizabeth Bennet, however, counted herself among none of these factions. She neither believed in curses nor subscribed to the view that Mr Darcy was merely unfortunate. Her mind, ever inclined to reason, settled instead upon a far darker conclusion: there was a killer in Meryton. Someone was taking lives, and the victims thus far were men who had the misfortune of clashing with Mr Darcy.
“And who else,” she argued passionately, “would that someone be but the man himself?”
The Bennet household had been alight with speculation since the news arrived, and Elizabeth, finding herself in conversation with her sisters, did little to mask her growing conviction. Lydia, who was more delighted by the dramatic tales circulating the town than distressed by the deaths, had repeated the gossip with a flourish. “They say Mr Darcy has the power to send men to their graves with nothing more than a glare,” she said, half-laughing as she recounted the latest exaggerations from the market square.
“There is no curse or mystic, Lydia,” Elizabeth retorted sharply. “But there is a murderer. And if you cannot see the connection between Mr Darcy and these deaths, you are blind to reason.”
Later that evening when Elizabeth and Jane spoke in Jane’s room, the elder sister said. “Lizzy, you must not let your imagination run wild. These deaths are dreadful, but it does notfollow that Mr Darcy is responsible. You cannot convict him merely on the grounds of ill rumours.”
Elizabeth turned to her eldest sister, her expression resolute. “Jane, you saw him. We both did. He argued with Mr Harper at the assembly, and by the next morning, Mr Harper was dead. He reprimanded Mr Thomas Granger for a mistake with his horse, and now he is gone too. Can you truly say there is no cause for suspicion?”
“I can say that suspicion is not evidence,” Jane replied, her voice steady but kind.
“You forget all I told you that Mr Wickham said.” For jane was the only one Elizabeth had shared her conversation with mr wickham with.
“And Mr Wickham’s account of Mr Darcy—though troubling—cannot be the sole basis of judgment. You must hear both sides of the story before you condemn a man.”
Elizabeth’s lips tightened, her brow furrowed with frustration. “And what if there is no other side to hear? If every man who quarrels with Mr Darcy ends up dead, must I wait for yet another life to be lost before we all act?”
Jane sighed, her eyes pleading. “Lizzy, we do not know the truth. Do not let your prejudice cloud your better judgment. A man’s character cannot be judged by one-sided stories and wild speculation.”
“But it can be judged,” Elizabeth retorted, her tone clipped, “if every man who crosses him meets his end.”
Jane’s calm gaze did not falter as she replied, “Yet Mr Wickham, by his own account, crossed Mr Darcy, and he remains quite alive.”
Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, her brow furrowing in thought before she found her reply. “But his life, in essence, was taken from him,” she said, her voice laced with conviction. “Mr Darcy stripped him of everything—first the living that hisfather promised, then the opportunity for his law education, which he denied by withholding the funds that were owed to him.”
“Lizzy,” Jane began, her tone gentle but firm, “I am still not convinced by Mr Wickham’s tale alone. It is a single story, and we have heard no response from Mr Darcy himself. Can you truly judge his character on such one-sided testimony?”
Elizabeth’s lips pressed together, her frustration evident. She did not reply, for to do so would mean acknowledging a small but uncomfortable truth: Jane’s reasoning, as always, was sound. Yet, sound reasoning did not diminish Elizabeth’s certainty. The discussion ended in a silence laden with unspoken tension, neither sister willing to yield her position.
As Elizabeth retired to her room that evening, her thoughts churned with restless energy. Every argument replayed itself in her mind, but her conclusion remained unchanged. She was convinced—utterly and unshakably—that Mr Darcy bore some responsibility for the deaths. He was the killer, she was certain of it.
Yet conviction was not enough. She needed proof, something irrefutable to lay bare the truth.
If only there were a way to uncover it,she thought as she lay awake, staring into the shadows. Sleep eluded her, chased away by the weight of her suspicions and the gnawing question of how she might expose the truth.
Seven
Darcy rose early the next morning, long before the rest of the household had begun to stir. Sleep had evaded him through much of the night, his mind plagued by uneasy thoughts. The events of the previous day lingered in his memory with a relentless insistence. Bingley, eager to address matters promptly, had dispatched a messenger to St. Albans to fetch a physician. The doctor had arrived in due course and, after a preliminary examination, had taken Tom’s body for further investigation, promising to determine whether there had been any foul play within forty-eight hours.
To complicate matters, the magistrate, Sir Barnaby Fairchild, had also appeared at Netherfield before the body’s removal, accompanied by Mr Tobias Hatch, the parish constable. They had come at Bingley’s behest, intent on examining the scene and questioning the household. Though their search yielded no immediate evidence of wrongdoing, they nonetheless resolved to interview the staff to ascertain everyone’s whereabouts during the night.
“Death seems to follow you, Mr Darcy,” Sir Barnaby had remarked during their brief conversation, his tone half-jesting yet laced with a seriousness that Darcy found irksome. “I must insist that you do not leave the town. We may need to speak with you further as the investigation progresses.”
It was not the magistrate’s words themselves that troubled Darcy so deeply, but rather the whisper of rumours they had mirrored. That evening, the apothecary’s assistant, Mr Samuel Reeds, had arrived with a draught intended to easeDarcy’s growing discomfort. While the remedy had provided some relief, its true benefit lay in the information Mr Reeds had unwittingly supplied. At Darcy’s prompting, the young man had divulged the town’s newest gossip about whispers of a “Darcy curse” that had begun to circulate with alarming fervour.
The notion was preposterous, of course, yet it gnawed at him nonetheless. Throughout the long, sleepless hours of the night, his thoughts churned with questions. Coincidence was too feeble an explanation to satisfy his logical mind. He had always prided himself on his education, his firm grounding in science and philosophy, and he dismissed the idea of curses as the foolish invention of superstitious minds. Yet, for all his rationality, he could not ignore the troubling pattern: men with whom he had quarrelled were dying.
As Darcy walked along the narrow path, the crisp morning air biting against his skin, his thoughts returned, unbidden, to the one name that seemed to hover on the edge of every troubling consideration: George Wickham. It was the only conclusion that bore any semblance of reason. Wickham harboured a resentment toward him—a resentment both longstanding and deeply rooted, though not without cause. The intensity of Wickham’s animosity was no secret to Darcy; it burned with the same fervour as the charm that so easily beguiled others.
And yet, as this theory took shape in his mind, doubt crept in, weaving its insidious way through his reasoning. What possible motive could Wickham have for orchestrating such heinous acts? Why target men who held no direct consequence in their shared history? Darcy’s steps slowed, his boots crunching against the frost-bitten earth, as he wrestled with these questions. Whatever Wickham’s faults—and they were many—the notion of him concocting such a plot seemed almost too outlandish, even for one of his scheming natures.
