Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1)

Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1)

Tirzah Price



Dedication

To all the obstinate, headstrong girls forging new paths.





Epigraph


“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

—Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen “Instinct is a marvelous thing. . . . It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

—The Mysterious Affair at Styles

by Agatha Christie




One


In Which Our Heroine Is Wronged, and Acquires a New Lead



IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that a brilliant idea, conceived and executed by a clever young woman, must be claimed by a man.

Elizabeth Bennet stood in the offices of the optimistically named law firm of Longbourn & Sons and fixed her father’s junior partner, Mr. Collins, with her fiercest glare. However, Mr. Collins just ignored her as he regaled the firm’s employees with the details of her escapades as though they were his own.

“I knew from the very moment Mrs. Davis pleaded her case with us that something was not quite right about her story. Her husband accused of embezzlement, and she, a clerk’s wife, dressed like a baroness?” He let out a loud, abrasive laugh that made Lizzie’s head ache.

Mr. Collins was too preoccupied with his own importance to pay attention to something as “trivial” as the state of a woman’s clothes! If Lizzie were to demand he close his eyes and name the color of her own spencer, she doubted that he’d be able to. (A fine emerald brocade, let the record show. Her older sister, Jane, had once said the jacket’s color made Lizzie’s eyes look bright.)

Lizzie’s father, Mr. Bennet, listened to Mr. Collins’s account with the patience of a man who had a lot of experience in enduring long-windedness. “And what happened next?”

“I made the appropriate inquiries, but still had my suspicions. I called upon Mrs. Davis three days later to question her some more. At one point, she became so flustered that she excused herself, allowing me time to, ah, glance upon the writing desk. I hoped that I might find some stray sum sheet, or letter . . .”

Mr. Collins fumbled, and Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Is that so?” she asked.

No one paid Lizzie any attention, and Mr. Collins continued. “In fact, I found a rather intimate note, signed ‘J.A.’ I found that highly suspicious, so I questioned the neighbors and learned that Mrs. Davis stepped out at the same time every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. She often didn’t return for hours. I followed her the next day, and that’s when I discovered the identity of J.A.—John Alston, her husband’s boss!”

Lizzie’s dear friend Charlotte Lucas gasped audibly from her desk. As Longbourn’s secretary, she was privy to many scandalous details of the firm’s various cases, but they were rarely as salacious as this. It’d been precisely Lizzie’s reaction when she’d discovered that Mrs. Davis had been having an affair with the very man who’d accused her husband, James, of embezzlement.

“It was all a deviously clever setup! And now I turn the case over to you, sir, as barrister, to prove our client’s innocence and demand justice.” With great ceremony, Mr. Collins handed over the letters Lizzie had pilfered from Mrs. Davis’s writing desk and gave a slight bow to his audience.

Longbourn & Sons was not a very large firm—it consisted of her father, boorish and barely twenty-year-old Collins, three other solicitors, two clerks, and Charlotte, the secretary. Nonetheless, Lizzie seethed as she watched Collins publicly claim credit for evidence that she herself had discovered.

“I am going to wring. His. Neck,” she muttered, just loudly enough for Charlotte to cast a concerned glance in her direction.

“The important thing is that an innocent man will soon be free,” Charlotte said.

“I suppose.”

“Lizzie, you know that in all likelihood . . .”

Charlotte trailed off, knowing that she was dredging up something Lizzie knew all too well: She could not argue Mr. Davis’s case herself, no matter how much she longed to be called to the bar. It was no matter—even if the courts would allow for a woman barrister, first she would have to convince her father that such a calling was appropriate for his beloved seventeen-year-old daughter.

“I know,” Lizzie said. “But that doesn’t mean he had any right to steal my work!”

Collins accepted handshakes and claps on the shoulder from the other solicitors and clerks while Mr. Bennet studied the letters. Gradually, the room quieted again as they waited for Mr. Bennet to pronounce his judgment.

“This is good, Collins, very good. I will speak to the magistrate straightaway.” He paused heavily, then added, “Of course, our client is not innocent.”

“Yes, he is. I’ve just told you, sir.” Collins smiled at Mr. Bennet in a condescending manner that Lizzie positively loathed.

Lizzie’s greatest strength was the quickness of her mind, but her greatest weakness, according to her mother, was the quickness of her tongue.

“Our client is Mrs. Davis,” she proclaimed loudly, unable to stand it any longer. “And she is most certainly guilty.”

Truly, the amount of patience Lizzie had to exert in this office was immeasurable.

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