Chapter 34
Clouseau could not believe that all of his spy networks had been destroyed and those who worked on his behalf had been arrested. They filled gaol cells at the tower. He was in a cell with St Claire, who, as soon as he had been arrested, had sung like a song bird. Had they not both been slated for execution the next morning, Clouseau may have killed the traitor himself.
He had withstood the harsh interrogation, but then, as a master spy, he was trained to resist such things. In the end, it had not mattered. They had found his carefully hidden and coded records. Somehow this shadowy British group, which kept uncovering the emperor’s men in the United Kingdom, broke the code. What he did not know was that as it was a numerical cypher he had used, it had been taken to Jane Fitzwilliam in Staffordshire and she had broken the code within an hour. This had led to the arrest of everyone. Total destruction of the network Clouseau had painstakingly built over the years he had been in this damned country.
To rub salt in the wound, the interrogators had informed Clouseau that all of the intelligence he had received from Wickham was false. They had known of their plans from the time St Claire had freed that useless, greedy man from King’s Bench. That action had been the beginning of the end for them.
The executions of the men who had worked on behalf of the emperor had begun a day or two previously. The executioner was earning many pairs of boots. Clouseau saw the irony in the high number of executions via the axe. It was almost at the pace of Madame Guillotine during the revolution. His dark thoughts were disturbed when he heard a key grate in the lock of the door to the cell where he and the snivelling St Claire were being held.
One of the guards pushed a man in before locking the door. “We thought ya may want to be reunited afore you meet the executioner in the morning,” the guard stated with amusement in his voice.
When Clouseau looked closely at the man, he recognised him as that useless waste of humanity, Wickham. Like St Claire, Wickham was shaking with fear.
“Look what your work gained for me,” Wickham managed when he saw St Claire.
“You were not working for me; your real master, was Clouseau over here,” St Claire cocked his head to indicate the man brooding in the corner. “He is a supposed master at this craft, but here he sits as caught as the rest of us.” He paused as he thought of something. “Did you talk?” he demanded.
“No, I did not,” Wickham insisted. “When they arrested me, they already knew everything. All of the information I was sending you was fake. They knew what you planned all along.” He looked at the two men with hate in his eyes. “This is the fault of both of you! I am to die because of you and your intrigues! As bad as King’s Bench was, I wish you would have left me there. At least, I would have remained alive.”
“On that we agree,” St Claire spat out. He turned to Clouseau. “This was your plan! This is all on your head…” St Claire never finished that sentence.
Clouseau’s anger had boiled over. It had been time to silence the useless men.
When the guards came to see what the disturbance in the cell was, they found three deceased men. It was determined that in a final act of defiance, Clouseau decided to cheat the executioner by murdering Wickham and St Claire and thenending his own life. Evidently the man had a small but very sharp knife hidden in a void in the sole of one of his boots.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The trial of William Clem Collins was not complicated, and with the surfeit of witnesses against him, the pleas of the former clergyman, who had been defrocked and then excommunicated, fell on deaf ears in the court.
All his claims of doing God’s work were rejected as blasphemy. His assertions that he had to punish the Bennets for stealing what should have been his were laughed at, as were any of his other spurious claims. In the end, the trial took less than half a day. The jury deliberated for about an half hour before returning a guilty verdict on every single one of the four and twenty counts of attempted murder.
The Lord Judge pronounced the ultimate sentence to be carried out at Newgate Prison at dawn the next morning.
None of Collins’s screams changed the outcome. The next morning, he refused to walk, thinking that would save him from his fate. However, he was dragged and half carried by six burly men. It took them some time, but they eventually manoeuvred Collins so that he was standing on the trapdoor. The hangman hooded the blubbering man. He had to use an extra strong rope given the condemned’s obesity.
Thanks to his excommunication, there was no clergyman to give Collins last rites. Just before the hangman pulled the lever which would open the trapdoor, Collins realised that he had no path to enter into heaven. It was with that reality in his head that his wasted life came to an end.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
When word that Collins’s sentence had been carried out as well as the demise of all of those men who had partaken in the spy rings, Wickham included, reached Netherfield Park, and thereafter Longbourn, the only sadness was for human lives wasted and lost. With a wedding in the future, none of the residents of either estate could spare time thinking of those who had determined their own ends by their criminal actions.
Darcy had delivered a draft settlement a sennight after the arrest of Wickham and Collins. It had been generous in the extreme, and he had left Elizabeth’s dowry under her control. As Bennet predicted, his second daughter was not sanguine with that. She did not want to begin a marriage with ‘your property’ and ‘my property’. Instead, she agreed that the money could be set aside and continue growing with her uncle for future daughters.
When it came to the date of the wedding, Darcy had had the right of it when he told Bennet that he did not believe Elizabeth would want to marry before her older sister could be present.
After a flurry of letters between the two, Jane had told her younger sister that she would arrive at Longbourn in early December, just shy of Robert reaching six months of age. With that known, the date for the wedding was set for the second Saturday in December.
Bennet got his wish; the engagement would be close to two months by the time the couple wed, and it left Lizzy at home under his protection a little longer than he had thought. She would still be leaving his house and be Darcy’s to protect soon enough, no matter how long the engagement period was. It was only delaying the inevitable. As much as Bennet mourned another daughter leaving his house, he did not, even in thesmallest measure, begrudge Lizzy and Darcy the obvious felicity they would share.
There was no missing that his soon-to-be son worshipped the ground Lizzy walked on, respected her, and would never attempt to subjugate her. Rather than be intimidated by her vast intellect and special ability, he seemed to relish all of her. How many men would be pleased when losing a debate to a woman? As Bennet knew the number was almost non-existent, he was certain he could not have parted with his Lizzy to a man more worthy to be her husband than Darcy.
The couple in question unapologetically spent as much time, as propriety would allow, in one another’s company. They had, as they had promised one another the day they became engaged, found moments of brief privacy to taste one another with kisses. In doing so, they had discovered that each of them had very passionate natures, which could only bode well for the future once they were married.
Elizabeth and Darcy met at Oakham Mount each morning that weather permitted. Since they had become betrothed, Bennet no longer allowed Lizzy to meet Darcy on the hill with only a footman standing at the head of the path.
Mrs Annesley, who was an accomplished horsewoman, accompanied Elizabeth each time she rode out—no matter how early—and sat on one of the benches under the bare and stark oak trees. She could see the couple clearly as they sat on the boulder Miss Lizzy preferred, but she was at such a distance that the two were able to speak without anyone overhearing them.
The time they spent together, like the mornings on Oakham Mount, only deepened the love between the two. Both were impatient for the day they would never need to part again.
