First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen (17 page)

—

THE POST CONTAINED FOUR
book catalogs, two advertising circulars, and yet another letter from Eric. She did not open it until she was comfortably seated on the five-fifteen for Kingham.

Dear Sophie,

I suppose you are growing tired of getting letters from Paris from that rude American who accosted you by the river. I promise this will be the last, because I don’t think I can take much more of Paris. It’s not that the French are rude (although the few French I have encountered aren’t exactly polite). It’s something that makes this letter difficult for me to write. I finally figured out last night, sitting alone by the Seine and looking up at Notre Dame, why I hate Paris. You aren’t here. I miss you Sophie. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but I had to say it. The fact is, I’m giving up on Florence and coming back to England. I need to see you, and I need to see if there was more to that kiss than I thought at the time. You probably think I’m an ass, but anyway, this ass is coming to find you and hoping you’ll give him a second (or is it third by now) chance.

Affectionately (that’s how Jane Austen signed her letters),

Eric

Sophie read the letter over three times, feeling more and more guilty about the thrill it gave her. Just reading it felt like cheating on Winston;
enjoying
reading it was even worse. But she couldn’t help herself. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about Eric, but the thought that he was coming back to England to see her left her a little breathless. She had just stowed the letter in her handbag and was turning to the catalogs when her phone rang.

“Where are you?” asked Winston. “I stopped by the shop and Gusty said you were sick and when I rang the flat there was no answer.”

“I’m fine,” said Sophie. “I’m on the train. I’m going up to Oxford to get my things.”

“I could meet you there,” said Winston. “We could spend the night. Take a room at the Randolph; I could show you all my old haunts.”

“Can you afford a room at the Randolph?” asked Sophie, who slumped a little deeper into her seat as she imagined a night with Winston in the freshly laundered sheets of Oxford’s finest hotel.

“Not exactly,” he said, “but don’t you have a room?”

“I have a room with a very narrow single bed.”

“I’m sure we could come to some sort of arrangement.”

“You never told me you were at Oxford,” said Sophie, changing the subject before she weakened further and agreed to let him come meet her.

“I read economics at St. John’s,” he said. “Longer ago than I care to think.”

“Yes, you’re
so
old,” she teased. “Much too old for me, I imagine.”

“So shall I meet you at the Eagle and Child around eight?”

“I’m actually going home for the night,” said Sophie. “To my parents’, that is.”

“I could come up tomorrow,” said Winston. “We could take a punt out, maybe have a picnic in the meadow.”

It was a glorious vision, but Sophie would not be distracted from her quest. “Not this time,” she said. “I have too much work to do cleaning out my room. I’ll call you, though. And maybe when I get back to town we could . . .” She left her sentence unfinished, but they both knew what she meant.

“We certainly could,” said Winston.

N
OVEMBER HAD FADED
into December and Christmas was on the horizon. Jane had worked several hours a day on the new and much expanded version of
First Impressions
. In the afternoons she read from her newly completed pages to Cassandra and Anna—a habit which further motivated her to write more pages each day. She did not breathe a word about the impending publication of the story from which her novel had been taken, nor did her sister ask about why that story had been written in someone else’s hand.

Two weeks after his departure, she had written hastily to Mr. Mansfield:

Steventon, November 23, 1796

My Dear Mr. Mansfield,

I have shared
First Impressions
only with Cassandra and my niece Anna, to whom I read each afternoon. Anna, I’m afraid, is so excited about the story that she keeps mentioning the names of Eliza Bennet and Mr. Darcy downstairs in the sitting room, and I’m sure the other occupants of the rectory must be filled with curiosity, but so far your little project remains, for the most part, a secret. I look forward to your return.

Yours very affectionately,

J. Austen

—

RICHARD MANSFIELD HAD NOT
slept well since his arrival in Yorkshire. The air was cold and the rectory drafty, and his body ached after being jangled for three days in coaches, but these were not the reasons for his insomnia. Even the search for a curate had occupied much less of his time and concern than he had feared. The son of one of the local landowners had lately completed his studies at Oxford and came recommended by both his tutors and the bishop. No, what occupied the mind of Richard Mansfield was Tobias Mansfield, known to his drinking companions, of whom he had many, as Toby. Tobias was Richard’s only son and his greatest disappointment. The boy’s mother had died when he was only three, in a failed attempt to bring a second child into the world, and since that day all of Richard’s hopes had been invested in his son. He had sent him to Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, in hopes that Tobias would follow in his father’s footsteps, but his son had let him down at every turn. At Oxford he drank with the toffs more often than he visited his tutors. After only a year he left that establishment in the company of those whom he called friends and had spent more than two decades bounding from one country house to another, living off his acquaintances, drinking, playing cards, and . . . Richard shuddered to think what else. On rare occasions Toby found himself between friends and only then did he return to his father, not for love or counsel, but only to ask for a “loan”—monies Richard always gave and Tobias never repaid.

Richard had returned to Croft to find Tobias had been an unwelcome guest at the rectory for several days. He knew that Tobias would leave as soon as his financial stability was secured, and so, because he feared these might be the last days he ever spent with his son, he had delayed making the loan for nearly two weeks. Tobias did not suffer this delay patiently, and, rather than cherishing these days spent with an aged father, he spent his hours in loud complaint—about the meanness of the meals, about the hardness of his bed, and most of all about his father’s total lack of need for the nearly one thousand pounds a year brought to him by the Croft living. With such a troublesome guest, Richard found it difficult to conduct his business, and impossible to indulge in those recreations he so craved—reading a good novel and corresponding with Miss Austen. Though he realized full well that not all boys grow up to be like Tobias and not all girls grow up to be like Jane, he wished, when lying in bed on those sleepless nights, that he had had a child. And on the last night before he finally resolved to give Tobias a banker’s draft and see him off, he went even further—he wished that Tobias were not his son and that Jane were his daughter. He regretted that he had not told her just how much he loved her.

“I take the midday coach to London, Father,” said Toby, who sprawled in front of the drawing room fire, his muddy boots propped on the fender. “I cannot wait much longer.” In his hand, Toby held a sheaf of papers that had been sitting on a table near the fire. Richard planned to deliver the manuscript of his revised and expanded little book to Gilbert Monkhouse as soon as he was rid of Tobias. In his sleeplessness the night before, he had stoked the fire in the drawing room and read
First Impressions
again.

“What is this nonsense?” said Toby, waving the papers in his hand. Richard felt a flash of anger toward his son.

“A story for the new edition of my book. Did you read it?”

“Enough of it to know that it’s rubbish and a waste of your time,” said Toby.

Richard could bear it no longer. He feared he would lash out at his son and speak words he would live to regret—and if those words were the last he ever spoke to his own flesh and blood, well, better that he pay the boy and be done with it. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the banker’s draft he had written earlier that morning, and held it out to Tobias.

“Now that,” said his son, snatching the draft away, “is a worthy use of pen and paper.”

“Will you come to morning service with me?” said Richard, knowing the answer. Whenever in residence at the rectory he always read the daily offices at the church.

“Perhaps I shall see you afterwards,” said Tobias. But Richard knew he would not see him afterwards. He knew that when he returned his son would be gone and he would likely never see him again.

—

THAT AFTERNOON,
Mr. Mansfield traveled to Leeds and handed the manuscript of
Little Allegories and a Cautionary Tale
to Gilbert Monkhouse with instructions that a proof copy be sent to him at Busbury Park. On his return to Croft the following day, he searched the shelves in his study and found his only remaining copy of the first edition of
A Little Book of Allegorical Stories
. Opening it to the first blank page, he wrote: “To J.A. Judge not too harshly, but like me reserve First Impressions for second editions. Affectionately, R.M.” Besides the book and a few personal items, there would be little else to pack. His new curate had arrived the previous week and seemed to have matters well in hand. It was time to return south.

T
RAIN TRAVEL MADE SOPHIE
feel romantic—she supposed it had begun with Agatha Christie’s description of the Orient Express. As she rattled into the Cotswolds and gazed out at the green fields dotted with sheep, she felt torn in at least three directions: Her body ached for Winston; her heart fluttered when she thought of Eric; and her mind told her there was a very good chance they were both bad news. As the train pulled into Kingham, she shoved this quandary out of her mind. Finding that book, proving Smedley’s guilt—these things were more important than her love life.

Her father had sent a taxi to meet her at the station and drive her to Bayfield House. Sophie arrived just as her mother was serving dinner.

“Sophie, do you know Mr. Tompkins?” said her father, when she had greeted her mother and dropped her bags in the corner of the kitchen.

A man in jeans and a white dress shirt stood and extended his hand to Sophie. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said. “Gerard Tompkins.”

Sophie suppressed a smile. He had, in fact, had the pleasure, she thought as she shook his hand, but she wasn’t about to remind him that he was her uncle’s least favorite bookseller or ask him if he had checked to be sure his copy of Newton’s
Principia
was still on the shelf. She ought to be nervous facing a man she had stolen from; instead she felt powerful.

“Sophie Collingwood,” she said. “What brings you to Bayfield House?” She slid into her seat, feeling sure she knew the answer.

“Your father is interested in thinning out the library a bit, now that—”

“Now that the opportunity presents itself,” said Mr. Collingwood, interrupting Mr. Tompkins. “I’ve asked Mr. Tompkins to sift out some of the more valuable items so I can afford to fix the roof.”

“What you mean,” said Sophie, unable to stop herself, “is now that Uncle Bertram is reasonably cold, you’re going to sell off our family history to the highest bidder, who no doubt is Mr. Tompkins here, judging from the ridiculous prices in his catalogs.” She was feeling more justified every minute in having stolen the
Principia
.

“Sophie,” said her father calmly, “if I don’t raise some funds to repair this house, there won’t be any library. It will become the victim of first the rainwater and then the bankruptcy court.”

“You didn’t get enough money from Uncle Bertram’s library—which he’d intended to go to me, by the way?” Sophie was no longer making any attempt to keep her voice at a civilized level. “I’m sure Mr. Tompkins here got some gems from that sale. Are they selling well, Mr. Tompkins?” The bookseller did not answer, and Sophie took this as confirmation that he was both an ass and a fool—how could he not know that someone had stolen a fifteen-thousand-pound book?

“Sophie, I loved my brother,” said Mr. Collingwood, “but he was not a responsible man. He left debts and the only way to pay those debts out of his estate was to sell his books. As it is I’ll be several thousand pounds out of pocket by the time everything is settled.”

“If you loved him, you never would have sold his books,” said Sophie, rising from the table.

“Please, let’s not argue,” said Mrs. Collingwood. “Sophie, sit down and have some dinner.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sophie, and she stomped out of the room.

Locked in her bedroom, she punched her pillow with anger and grief until she exhausted herself. Then she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and considered her next move. She would need the key to the library from the hook in the kitchen, and she would need privacy, so there was no point in stirring from her room until everyone was asleep. But she had to strike as quickly as possible. The Bayfield House library, Uncle Bertram had once told her, contained nearly six thousand volumes, and tomorrow every one of them was a potential victim of the sword of Damocles that was the unscrupulous Mr. Tompkins. Sophie would have only a few hours to find the Mansfield book, if it was even there, and to make her escape. She sat in the chair by her window, looking into the garden, where the late-summer light was fading fast, and listened for the sound of her parents turning in. To pass the time, she started reading the catalogs that had come in that morning’s post.

It was on the first page of a catalog from a dealer in Bath: “Austen, Jane.
Orgueil et Préjugés
, being the second French translation of
Pride and Prejudice
.” The description fit Sophie’s copy perfectly, right down to the nineteenth-century inscription: “Marie Bonnel, 1847.” The price was fifteen hundred pounds. So, Eric had not found her gift for a song at a stall along the Seine. He hadn’t even bought it in Paris. He must have gone to Bath after that scene in the garden—it would make sense for an Austen enthusiast. Jane Austen had lived in Bath for more than five years and had set important parts of her novels there. But it was one thing for a hitchhiking American to wander around Bath in the footsteps of Jane Austen; it was another for him to go into a bookshop and spend fifteen hundred pounds on a book for a girl he hardly knew. Was it a grand romantic gesture or something more sinister?

Before she could decide whether to be touched or disturbed by this new knowledge, she heard the door to her parents’ room click shut. She cracked her own door and watched until the light under their door was extinguished. She waited another few minutes before creeping out of her room and down the stairs—stepping over the creaky fifth step as she and her sister had done so many times in childhood when sneaking downstairs for a late-night snack. Sophie went first to the kitchen, where the key to the library was hanging on the hook she had seen her father take it off of every Christmas. Finding a torch took a little longer, but she finally found one that worked on a high shelf in the laundry. She tiptoed down the long main corridor, past gloomy portraits of forgotten ancestors, until she reached the solid oak doors of the library. She unlocked a door, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. Flipping on the torch, she shone it around the room. How could she have lived in a house with such a magnificent library and never been allowed access? How might her life have been different if she had spent her childhood and adolescence meeting the books on these shelves, curled up in front of the grand marble fireplace reading? What might she have become? She tried to comfort herself with the thought that if she had learned to love books here at Bayfield House, she might never have shared that part of her life with Uncle Bertram. He had been the one who introduced her to that world, and because of that he had been—well, she had never really named it before, but he had been, in a certain way, the love of her life.

It was quarter past midnight, and Sophie’s father was an early riser. She figured she had about five hours to work—work made more difficult by the fact that she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. Her uncle had left the key to the library cases with a cryptic note, and that might mean the Richard Mansfield book was here at Bayfield. Two different collectors had approached her and only her about the second edition, and
that
might mean the book was here at Bayfield. But a third and stronger possibility haunted her: There might be no second edition, here or anywhere else. There might be no way to prove Smedley was a killer, and furthermore, there might be no way to placate him and keep him from wanting to kill again. With this chilling thought, Sophie unlocked the case to the left of the fireplace and began her search.

She shone her torch across the spines and cursed the fact that she couldn’t pull out every book to look at more closely. It was easy to skip over long sets of uniformly leather-bound volumes—
The Waverley Novels
or a long run of
Notes and Queries
—but as she moved to cases on the side of the room, away from the fireplace, the decorative sets disappeared, and every volume looked tantalizing. She knew the approximate size of the first edition of
A Little Book of Allegorical Stories
, but she also knew there was something different about the second edition, so she couldn’t assume anything. She supposed she ought to be looking for books by Bulwer-Lytton, too, but thanks to Uncle Bertram’s aversion, she had no idea what they looked like—her teenage infatuation had been limited to a paperback of
The Last Days of Pompeii
. Many of the older books had no titles on the spines, and Sophie’s search was slowed by having to pull volumes off the shelves and flip to their title pages. She cringed to think that so many of these volumes—books she would love to use to populate Uncle Bertram’s shelves—were soon to be lost, but she didn’t dare steal more than what she needed to accomplish the job of entrapping Smedley. She wanted her father and Mr. Tompkins to be ignorant of the theft.

On a low shelf behind a sofa, Sophie found a battered copy of
The Book of Common Prayer
dated 1760. The front cover was barely attached and on the endpaper was a list of names headed “Baptisms.” At the bottom of the list Sophie saw her grandfather’s name: “Henry George Collingwood, December 3, 1928.” She was just about to put the book back on the shelf when her eye caught a name, and a piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. Perhaps she
was
looking in the right place. Perhaps there was a very good reason why the Bayfield library should house a copy of
A Little Book of Allegorical Stories
.

An entry partway down the page read: “Sarah Monkhouse, daughter of Gilbert Monkhouse and Theresa Monkhouse née Wright. Baptized December 14, 1798.” Sophie read through the entire list and confirmed her suspicion. She was descended from a printer named Thomas Wright, but she was also descended from Thomas’s son-in-law, who was none other than Gilbert Monkhouse, the man who had printed the first edition of Mansfield’s book. It was not surprising that both men were printers. What could be more natural than for an apprentice to fall in love with the master’s daughter? Uncle Bertram had told Sophie that the family library began with a printer retaining copies of the books he had printed for others. It all made sense now. Smedley would only have had to do a little genealogical research to discover that Sophie was descended from the printer of Mansfield’s book. A tour of Bayfield House would probably reveal the information that the library had begun as a collection of printer’s samples. Smedley had assumed the book was either in Bertram’s library or at Bayfield House. He had killed Uncle Bertram and searched his flat without success. His next logical step was to search Bayfield, but that was not so easy. So, why not threaten the young bibliophile in the family so she would do the job for him? But she still could not imagine why the second edition of a painfully dull book of allegories merited all this cloak-and-dagger intrigue.

That Smedley would stalk her, researching her family background, seemed not just creepy but nefarious. However, Winston might have done the same thing—yet in his case it seemed charming. Maybe the memory of sex with Winston was clouding her judgment, but his desire for
A Little Book of Allegorical Stories
seemed like nothing more than the bit of fate that had brought them together.

She returned
The
Book of Common Prayer
to the shelf and continued her search. She felt much more sure, now, that the Mansfield book was in the library, and lacking any other clues, she began to focus on searching for Bulwer-Lytton. The light of dawn had been peeking through the cracks in the bolted shutters for some time when she found, on the top shelf of the west wall, a copy of
The Last Days of Pompeii
. Certain that it must contain the next clue from Uncle Bertram, she pulled it from the shelf. It was not even a first edition—just an ordinary copy that had clearly been read many times. It had no inscription, no marginalia, no bookmarks or notes slipped in between the pages.

She wanted more than anything to hurl that book across the room, but she didn’t dare make a sound. She replaced it and sat on the floor. She had searched barely half of the library, and who knew what Mr. Tompkins would discover and cart away in the course of the day now dawning? If she did not find the second edition soon, she probably never would. Her mind was blurry from lack of sleep, but she pulled Uncle Bertram’s card out of her jeans pocket and stared at it once again.

NC 1971 Bulwer-Lytton

What had her uncle told her about Bulwer-Lytton? All she could remember was that one conversation about the worst opening line in English literature: “It was a dark and stormy night.” The answer struck Sophie with the force of a thunderclap at the exact moment that she heard footsteps upstairs. Knowing that she probably had no more than a few minutes, she scrambled back onto the library ladder and perused the shelf next to
The Last Days of Pompeii
. There were several other equally worn copies of Bulwer-Lytton novels. At the end of the shelf, she found what she was looking for:
Paul Clifford
.

The footsteps upstairs had become louder. Whoever was up was now wearing shoes and would probably be coming downstairs any second. She had to return the key to the kitchen before anyone discovered it was gone. Taking the book with her, and hoping that she was right, she left the library, carefully relocking the door. She slipped off her shoes and rushed to the kitchen in her stocking feet. Her handbag and overnight bag were still by the door, where she had left them. She returned the key to the hook, slipped
Paul Clifford
into her handbag, and had just put on her shoes when her father and Mr. Tompkins came into the room.