A Jane Austen Encounter (18 page)

Gerri said she had been in the grounds for hours and that she could prove it. Richard said Muriel had been warm when he felt for a pulse, so Gerri couldn’t have been with her. Could she?

“Oh, sorry! I wasn’t looking where . . .” Elizabeth had bumped into Rosemary so hard she almost knocked her down the stairs. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry.”

“No, no. I’m fine.” But Rosemary was still gripping the rail tightly enough to make her knuckles white. “I was coming to tell you. So silly of me. My mind just isn’t functioning. We don’t have Mary Austen’s Daybook. I wish we did, but it’s in the Hampshire Record Office. I could make arrangements for you to see it if you wish, but I found a copy of the page online.”

They descended the stairs, Rosemary talking about the fashion for Georgian ladies to carry pocketbooks which gave useful information such as the Christian calendar, fashion plates, the monarchs of England, “and space for a brief diary entry for each day,” she concluded as they returned to Richard, still reading at his table.

He looked up from the printout he had been studying. “Unfortunately, Mary made an art of being cryptic. ‘17 July 1817 Jane Austen was taken for death about ½ past 5 in the Evening 18 July 1817 Jane breathed her last ½ after four in the morn; only Cass and I were with her. Henry came, Austen & Ed came, the latter returned home.’”

Elizabeth sat beside him, “Heartbreakingly austere. But perhaps fitting for the author whose gift for understatement is one of her triumphs.”

Elizabeth looked round. Rosemary had returned to her desk on the far side of the room and Gerri had gone out. “Richard, I’ve got to show you something.” She put her hand in her pocket.

Before she could bring it out, though, Beth, Claire and Robert entered. “We just came to say good-bye,” Beth said.

“Oh, are you going?” Elizabeth fingered the thread. If there was anything to her suspicions, she would rather have them all here. Something about safety in numbers.

“Yes, we must,” Claire answered. “Robert and I should have been back yesterday.”

“Me too,” Beth added. “But you’re going to be in Godmersham next week, aren’t you? Perhaps we shall see you there. That’s next on my agenda too. And Paul said something about meeting me there before he left last night, so you may see him as well. I think he’s decided to carry on with the ‘quest’.”

“Good. I’m so glad,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes,” Beth agreed. “I’d like to help, but I must get these ‘On the Trail’ features filed first. Of course, I sent the story about Dr. Greystone’s death in yesterday.”

She held out her iPhone and pulled up the current edition of The Bath Chronicle. “I have to say, my editor was delighted. To have me on the scene, that is. Obviously not about Muriel. Ghouls that journalists can be, we aren’t that bad.” Elizabeth looked up from the tiny screen filled with a photo showing scattered books under a bookcase and an arm clad in bright purple protruding beneath an antique volume. “How did you get that picture?”

Beth blushed, but before she could answer, Arthur came in. “My doing, really,” he said. I know it was wrong, but—”

“No, Arthur, it was the right thing,” Beth turned back to Elizabeth and Richard. “Gerri was so upset. Arthur convinced her she would feel better if she saw the scene of the accident.”

“It seemed right at the time. Now I’m not so sure, but I thought anything she imagined would probably be worse than the reality,” he said.

“What could be worse than the reality of having Muriel dead?” They all turned at Gerri’s return. She took the phone from Elizabeth’s hand. “But yes, I think you were right, Arthur. Muriel with those beautiful old books . . . There is something almost poetic about it. Thank you.”

She handed the phone back to Beth. “Arthur distracted Constable Dawson. We were only in the room for seconds,” the reporter explained.

Elizabeth sighed. She felt as if she had been holding her breath ever since she found the thread, debating whether she should confront Gerri or ring Sergeant Townsend. The relief at having to do neither was enormous.

It was the tragic accident the police believed. She could have laughed out loud. Now she could concentrate on helping Richard with his thesis and simply enjoying the rest of their sabbatical.

Chapter 16

“OH, THIS IS SO Jane.” Elizabeth looked up from the book she had taken into the garden, where she and Richard sat in a sunny corner reading. After the others left, Arthur had very kindly taken Gerri off to treat her to a cream tea at Cassandra’s Cup, leaving Richard and Elizabeth in lovely peace. A bee buzzed in the flowerbed behind her and Elizabeth smiled. This was just as she had pictured their sabbatical would be.

Richard lowered the memoir he had brought out from the library. “What’s so Jane?”

“The advice she gives to her niece Anna about the novel she’s writing. ‘Your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right hand & left.’ Jane never over-describes, does she?”

“True. Always a light touch. What are you reading?”

She held it out for him to see
Jane Austen and Her Art
by Mary Lascelles. “I used it in a seminar years ago, but it definitely bears rereading. She talks about
The Watsons
in her chapter on Jane’s style, mentioning that Jane pruned her account of the Edwards’ house of its minute particulars.”

“Ah, that reminds me of something she wrote to Cassandra.” Richard laid aside his memoir and picked up a volume of the
Letters
he was keeping handy for reference. He turned a few pages, then smiled. “Yes, here it is. ‘Eliza: has given me a hat, and it is not only a pretty hat, but a pretty stile of hat too. It is something like Eliza’s only instead of being all straw, half of it is narrow purple ribbon. I flatter myself however that you can understand very little of it, from this description. Heaven forbid that I should ever offer such encouragement to Explanations, as to give a clear one on any occasion myself.’”

Elizabeth joined his amusement, then returned to the discussion of Jane’s editing of
The Watsons.
“Wouldn’t it be fascinating to study the original manuscript, as apparently Mary Lascelles did?” She returned to her book. “It seems it gives real insight into how Jane worked. Let me find the passage.” She scanned the page. “Yes, here it is. She’s talking about how Jane achieved such naturalness in her speech. Apparently Jane first simply wrote down what she wanted her characters to communicate, then gradually added the idiosyncrasies.”

“Wait a minute,” Richard interrupted. “Isn’t that exactly what Muriel proposed to do in her
Analysing Jane
proposal—look at the original manuscripts to see how Jane worked? Surely she would have known Mary Lascelles had already done it.”

“Muriel, being Muriel, probably thought she could do it better.” Elizabeth sighed. “I miss her.” After a moment, she picked up her book again. “Lascelles gives an example of the first chapter of
The Watsons
, where Emma and Elizabeth are driving together and Elizabeth is explaining the family ‘with the least possible help from the author’s own voice.’ She says that in the first draft, Elizabeth simply gives the facts, but ‘this plain account is afterwards so modified by a number of minute touches—above all by the substitution of little colloquialisms for formal speech—as to indicate the peculiar tone of the speaker.’”

“Ah, what a rare art that is,” Richard agreed. “How I would love to get a look at that original manuscript. I wonder where it is.”

“Perhaps Rosemary knows. We can ask her when we go in.” But Elizabeth was in no hurry to leave the idyllic garden setting. She set her book aside and watched a pair of yellow butterflies flit among the bright blossoms of the mixed border beside her seat. “How is your reading going?”

“Almost finished. It’s really heartbreaking that she didn’t finish
The Watsons
, I’m enjoying it so much—and only one page left.”

Richard returned to his reading and Elizabeth returned to her daydreaming until she was pulled from her reverie by a sharp exclamation from her companion. “What!” Richard jerked to the edge of his seat and held the book at arms’ length. “There it is. Why didn’t I know this? Oh, what a fool I’ve been.” He groaned and sank back against his bench.

“Richard! What are you on about? What’s the matter?”

He held the book out. “Read this.”

She turned to the last page in the Austen-Leigh
Memoir of Jane Austen
. ‘How Jane Austen had intended
The
Watsons
to continue,’ she read. “Richard! You mean it’s here? What we’ve been looking for all this time?”

He merely nodded.

She read aloud, “‘When the author’s sister, Cassandra, showed the manuscript of this work to some of her nieces, she also told them something of the intended story; for with this dear sister—though, I believe, with no one else—Jane seems to have talked freely of any work that she might have in hand. Mr. Watson was soon to die; and Emma to become dependent for a home on her narrow-minded sister-in-law and brother. She was to decline an offer of marriage from Lord Osborne, and much of the interest of the tale was to arise from Lady Osborne’s love for Mr. Howard, and his counter affection for Emma, whom he was finally to marry.’”

Elizabeth looked again at her husband. “So there never was any mystery?”

“The only mystery is why I didn’t already know that.”

“You couldn’t have been expected to. You hadn’t read the memoir for years and you only taught the major novels.” Then another thought struck her. “But why didn’t Muriel know? Why was she encouraging you on this wild goose chase? She was the great scholar. She
must
have known.”

Richard shook his head. “And this major book Albion Press was supposed to be bringing out—”

“With your great find as the centerpiece . . .”

“Maybe Paul Exeter discovered her sham and tipped the bookcase over on her in anger. Pity I wasn’t there to help him.” Richard jerked to his feet and stomped back toward the house.

Elizabeth watched him go. She shared his disappointment. And outrage. But more, she was puzzled. What possible reason could Muriel have had for encouraging him in that search if she knew there was nothing to find? Was it just a snare to get her publisher more interested? But surely she could see that in the end, that would come to nothing. And then she would look worse for failing to deliver.

Still puzzling, she rose to follow Richard inside, then noticed that he had left his books on the bench. She would return them to the library, then find Richard and make a pot of tea. She smiled. She still had a selection of luxury chocolate biscuits left over from the Box Hill picnic. That would raise his spirits.

She found Rosemary just clearing off her desk for the day. “Sorry, afraid I have more to add to your pile.” Elizabeth held out their books.

“Thank you. I hope they were helpful.”

“Well . . .” Elizabeth told her of the trail they had been following and the abrupt end it had come to.

“Yes, you’re quite right. That is known.” She thought for a moment. “You don’t suppose there was anything else? Something more detailed? If there was anything in Jane’s own hand, it would be enormously valuable, of course.” She turned to her computer. “You caught me just in time. I was about to shut this down for the day.”

“I don’t want to keep you,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, no. I think I can find this quite quickly. It was just what I said about an original manuscript—I wanted to show you this article. You might not have seen it in the States. It was a couple of years ago.” She made a few clicks, then turned the screen around to show Elizabeth. “See, a partial copy of the manuscript of
The Watsons
sold for something like three times its estimated value.”

Elizabeth leaned forward. The article was from
The Guardian
, dated 14 July, 201l, and was accompanied by a picture of two manuscript pages in a neat script.

The heavily corrected manuscript from The Watsons, written in about 1804, was acquired by the Bodleian library at Oxford for £993,250 at Sotheby’s. The hammer went down to a round of applause, since the lot had been estimated to reach £200,000-£300,000.

The 68 pages, hand-cut and bound into 11 small booklets by the author, are thought to be a quarter of the original length. A further dozen pages, sold to raise money for the Red Cross during the first world war, are at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and some others were lost from the library of Queen Mary, University of London about six years ago.

Elizabeth stood up and started to turn the screen back to its original position when the import of the final sentence struck her. She turned back and read again, “. . .lost from the library of Queen Mary, University of London about six years ago.” “Lost” presumably being British understatement for stolen.

Original manuscript pages of
The Watsons
, pages in Jane Austen’s own handwriting worth maybe a million pounds, had gone missing.

Now she knew what Muriel’s wild goose chase was really all about.

She couldn’t wait to tell Richard. That was something really worth hunting for. Something they knew had existed only a few years ago. . .

She stopped as a chill shook her body. Was that what Muriel had been killed for? Had she come too close to discovery? Would she and Richard be in similar danger if they took up the trail?

Chapter 17

RICHARD LISTENED WITH GROWING amazement as Elizabeth poured out her story, then booted up his own laptop to see the article for himself. “Yes. Just as you say. Hmm. I wonder if there’s any follow-up news. Perhaps it’s been recovered by now.”

He tried searching “Austen manuscript stolen” and scanned a few headings. “Look. This is interesting: ‘Priceless 12-century manuscript, which contains Europe’s first travel guide, went missing from a safe in Spanish cathedral.’”

“What?”

Richard read on, “
‘The Codex Calixtinus
, which was kept in a safe at the cathedral’s archives in Santiago de Compostela, is thought to have been stolen by professional thieves. Police reportedly believe that a black market dealer in antique manuscripts may have commissioned the robbery.’”