Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (34 page)

I found her in the passage outside the kitchens (the children's favourite haunt), attempting to keep a shutdecock aloft with the help of young William. A well-feathered shutdecock shall always have the power to tempt me; I am a proficient of the batdedore of old; and so I joined the children straightaway, to their screams of delight. On several occasions we kept it aloft with three strikes of the batdedore, and on
one
memorable instance, for
six.
And when at last the cock had fallen behind a mountain of bundles left standing in the hall— the work of the invasion packers—and defied retrieval, to William's dismay, we all retired to the kitchen itself, to plead for shortbread and lemon-water.

“Fanny,” I said, after Cook had satisfied our first pangs of thirst, and gone about the business of dressing a guinea hen, “whatever has occurred to unsetde Miss Sharpe?”

She turned upon me a clear green gaze, so much like her mother's. “It must be an affair of the heart, Aunt Jane, I am certain of it.”

“You have read your novels to good effect, Fanny. A romantic young lady will always find trouble to stem from an affair of the heart; but in Miss Sharpe's case, I cannot believe it. She goes nowhere and sees no one—and yet, for much of the past week, she has been decidedly unwell. What
can
have precipitated her distress?”

“Not me,” William declared stoudy. “I always run when I see her coming.”

“She may go abroad very litde,” Fanny said carelessly, “but she has had a letter. I know—I saw it.”

'You saw her correspondence? For shame, Fanny!”

“Not to
read”
she protested. “Just to see. Russell brought it to the schoolroom, on a little silver tray, once the post had come.”

“But Miss Sharpe surely has received a letter before. She must have a wide acquaintance—her previous life having been lived in the world of Fashion. There can be nothing extraordinary in this.”

“Oh, Aunt
Jane”
Fanny cried irritably, “you are determined to plague and vex me, you troublesome creature!—Do you like that phrase? I learned it by heart, from one of Madame D'Arblay's works.”

“It is admirably put. Madame D'Arblay may always be depended upon for insults in the first style of elegance.”

“But what I would tell you, Aunt, is simply this: Sharpie always receives her letters on Tuesdays. They come from her friends, the Portermans. General Sir Thomas and Lady Porter man are excessively fond of her, you know, and correspond most faithfully. Direcdy she receives her letters, she sets Eliza and me to learning a piece of verse, and composes an answer while we are bent over our books.”

“I perceive that Miss Sharpe is a creature of method. Perhaps we may hope for the imposition of order upon your sadly muddled life. I fail to see, however, that her method lends itself to your present theory. There is little of the heart written in it.”

“But
this
letter—the important one—came on
Wednesday
, Aunt Jane, which you must agree is contrary to all expectation.” Fanny paused to savour her triumph.

“Unless the mails were delayed.”

“But it was
not
the usual Tuesday letter from the Portermans, because the hand was entirely strange; and I saw that Sharpie caught her breath when she accepted it from Russell.”

“And did she then set you to learning a piece of verse?” I enquired curiously.

“She stuffed the letter hurriedly into her pocket, as tho' she dared not trust herself to peruse its lines,” Fanny confided. “Only consider, Aunt Jane! Sharpie believes her love forever denied—all hope of passion lost—and then, when she had ceased to look for it, the summons comes! He is once more a free man! He longs to press her to his bosom. But she—
she
cannot determine to go to him. She is tortured with doubt. She reads his letter again and again, rising at midnight to study the words by the light of a flickering taper… tho' they are already written indelibly on her soul…”

“Can not we ask Salkeld to move the boxes?” William broke in plaintively. “I should hate to lose my shuttlecock. Uncle Henry brought it from London, and I am sure that Canterbury has nothing so fine.”

“… and then, at dawn, she burns it in the schoolroom grate!” Fanny declared, with a fine flair for the dramatic.

“She never did!” William cried, “for Daisy never lays a fire in that room in summer.”

“Oh, hush, William.” Fanny dismissed him with a look of scorn; it must be remarkable that she, a girl of twelve, had suffered the proximity of a boy half her age for so long as a morning's exercise. “You have no understanding of narrative structure, you silly boy. The fire at dawn is essential.”

“Yes, dear—but
was
there a fire?” I could not help asking.

Fanny looked over her shoulder carefully, as tho' to foil an observer. “Miss Sharpe requested Daisy to build one on Thursday morning, altho' the morning was fine. She would insist that the schoolroom was damp, and needed an airing, and that a fire would ward off the danger of a chill. I thought it all nonsense, for you know we did not have any rain until yesterday; but when I returned from my dinner in the nursery, I found her kneeling by the grate, with a bundle of letters in her hands. She was burning them, every one.”

“Wednesday's letter, as well?”

Fanny shrugged eloquently. “I am sure
I do
not know, Aunt Jane. But it would make a very good story if she had.”

I could not do otherwise than to agree with my niece, and considered of Miss Sharpe's furtive behaviour with a mind grown cold with apprehension. Then I charged Fanny not to plague the governess on the subject of her mysterious correspondence, or to confide the nature of my questions; concern for the young woman's well-being alone had animated my enquiry, and I deemed it best that she be left to nurse her trouble in peace. Fanny and William offered a solemn vow of silence, that I fervently hoped would survive the morning; and so I left them to their shortbread, and the promise of the packing-cases being very soon shifted.

I had burned enough letters myself, to know that they were rarely consumed to satisfaction. Ashes from the schoolroom grate might hold the key to Miss Sharpe's behaviour; and the ashes themselves might yet be located, in some safe corner of the scullery. But could I calmly put in train the ruin of the governess's privacy?

A picture of Anne Sharpe's wretched countenance, as it had appeared this morning in my Yellow Room, decided me in an instant. The governess had said that she was haunted by the murdered Mrs. Grey—and I intended to know the reason why.

“A
SHES
?” M
RS
. S
ALKELD STOOD ARRESTED IN MID
stride, a great ring of keys in one upraised hand. “Whatever should you be wishing for ashes, miss?” Then, recollecting herself, she added swiftly, “—Not that it's the least bit of my business, I'm sure, and you'll forgive the impertinence. You'll be having your reasons, no doubt. I was just that surprised—”

“I'm afraid that in all the busde of packing, I burned a few papers I should not,” I told her. “I have little hope of any remnant remaining, of course—but while there is the slightest opportunity of retrieval—”

“Ah, you and your little papers, Miss Austen,” the housekeeper returned with a comfortable laugh. “Many's the time I've said to Russell, 'How accomplished all the young ladies are today, to be sure! There's that Miss Jane, always scribbling in her little books, what she sews together herself, and laughing to herself all the while.' There's no end of amusement for the young ladies, nowadays—and in your grandmamma's time, I daresay none of the fine misses even knew their letters!”

I merely inclined my head bashfully at this, and begged silent forgiveness of the dear departed Jane Leigh, late the wife of a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, who had certainly known her letters—and followed Mrs. Salkeld into the stillroom.
1

“Here is the ash-tub,” she said with a gesture towards a barrel in the corner. “We always keep a goodly supply, for the soap-making, as you'll see. I'm sure I cannot tell you, miss, where the ashes from the Yellow Room grate might be; and a deal of work you'll find it to sift the lot.”

“Perhaps I might employ a gardener's sieve,” I mused, with an eye to the girth and depth of the barrel.

“Then I shall call for the under-gardener,” Mrs. Salkeld said decisively, “that he might shift the barrel out-of-doors while he's about it, and save us all a good deal of mess. Do you wait a moment, miss, and I'll send Russell in search of the lad.”

I waited a moment—I waited several—and indeed, a quarter-hour had passed, during which the rain failed to dissipate, and the gloom of my task impressed itself forcibly on my mind.

“Are you sure you hadn't better wait for the weather to clear, miss?” Mrs. Salkeld enquired doubtfully, when she had returned from despatching Russell out into the wet.

“You are too good, my dear Mrs. Salkeld—but the anxiety I have caused myself in the destruction of these papers, may only be relieved by immediate activity. I shall take care to don a cloak and bonnet, you may be sure.”

“Lord, miss! You may certainly have the loan of mine, which are hanging right within the door.”

And so, promising to guard Mrs. Salkeld's property from a wanton besmirching, I met the under-gardener on the back terrace, and commenced my unwholesome task.

A
QUANTITY OF ASH, AS ANY UPPER HOUSEMAID WILL
own, is never a friend to order. Its feather-weight quality will incline it to rapid dispersal in a wind, while its powdery dirt invades every crevice and pore. On a fine day, my task should have been tiresome enough; but that same quantity of ash, turned sodden from the effects of rain, is positively loathsome. Shelter under the eaves of the house as I might, I was as grimy as a chimney sweep's monkey by the time a quarter-hour was out. What my elegant sister Lizzy should say, did she stumble upon me unawares, I shuddered to think; and if Miss Sharpe should venture from her bed—

Mrs. Salkeld had thoughtfully provided a second barrel, for the transference of the stuff, and a large garden trowel in addition to the sieve. My work was fairly rapid, as a result, and I had not progressed beyond a quarter of the barrel's depth when I began to detect a difference in the texture of the ash. Much of it had been of a soft, light-grey powder—the remains of the hickory logs Lizzy burned in her grate while she dressed for dinner, regardless of the season. But now I detected a coarser substance amidst the fine—several large flakes of stiff rag, scorched yellowish-black at their edges.

I dropped the trowel and removed my cotton gloves, already quite spoilt from the effects of the ash—bent down to lift the fragile scraps from their bed of powder— and laid them carefully to rest in the mesh sieve. Delicate work, with all the pressure of time; for Miss Sharpe might determine her migraine to be fled at any moment, and descend to the servants' wing in search of tea. I schooled myself to calm, and fingered my way through the ash for perhaps another quarter-hour, the rain beating soft as a kiss on Mrs. Salkeld's bonnet. Then, perceiving the ash to be once again of the sort that derived from logs alone—more of Lizzy's hickory, no doubt—I declared myself satisfied and carried the precious bits back into the stillroom.

“Mrs. Salkeld,” I called, “I have found success! Russell may retrieve the barrel at his convenience, and convey my thanks to the under-gardener.”

“I'll not be a moment, miss,” Mrs. Salkeld called to me comfortably from the kitchen passage, “once I've just sent this teapot up to poor Miss Sharpe. Rang for Daisy, she did, and another fire; the cold's that penetrating today, what with the rain.”

I left her muttering over the ways of governesses too fine to work for their bread, and smuggled my burden into the library. With the gentlemen gone, it should be quite deserted of life; for Lizzy would spend the better part of the day dressing in her boudoir, in respect of her condolence call at The Larches.

I am sorry to say that Miss Sharpe's letters divulged litde to my plundering eyes. However incomplete the attempt at burning had been, the fragments were well-nigh indecipherable. The power of my own sight is indifferent at best, from the adverse effect of writing and sewing in every manner of light; and it was only through the adoption of my brother's quizzing glass—discarded near a pile of tradesmen's bills left lying on his desk— that I could discern anything at all. What emerged under the influence of a stronger lens was a smattering of letters, that trailed off disobligingly: o/^affect? affection? or affable?—
mise
—chemise? promise?—and then, quite starkly, the entire word
death
.

I sat back on my heels abruptly at that, and considered.
My affection for you, I promise, will endure unto death.
That should fit Fanny's reading of the situation. Or perhaps it had said:
Such an affable reception, in your white chemise
—
I am sure you caught your death!
Or perhaps the fragments were drawn from separate letters, and together would make no sense whatsoever. In either case, the endeavour was hopeless. I had found just enough to tantalise, and too litde to enlighten.