by Amy Myers
‘So returning to where we began: why go at all?’
SEVEN
‘Peter’s here,’ Luke announced. ‘He’s getting out of the car.’ Georgia’s first reaction was to ask: What’s wrong?
Peter seldom arrived at Medlars without prior warning, and a sudden arrival on a Saturday morning was unprecedented. Alarm bells were ringing furiously. The washing machine promptly then added its own contribution by sounding the alert that it had finished its cycle, and simultaneously the phone rang. She left Luke to deal with these two demands, while she hurried out to meet Peter.
To her relief, far from looking as though he had a disaster to announce, he was obviously excited.
‘What’s up?’ she asked cautiously.
‘A cup of coffee and I might condescend to tell you.’
She gritted her teeth and followed his suggestion. It was quicker that way. Coffee was easy to fix, and Peter beamed his approval.
‘Care to share the news?’ she asked.
‘The bad or the good?’
‘Bad first.’
‘Cath rang me about the Tanners. She thought she was doing rather well on Max. He was released in 1999 and went to live in London with his parents. Then he moved to Norwich and vanished from the records, and Tanner isn’t an easy name to track down. Too many of them. So the trail goes cold. Esther Tanner, on the other hand, moved to north London and remarried.’
‘New name?’
‘Wilson.’
It took a moment to sink in, and then: ‘Are you saying . . . but you can’t be. Wilson’s also a common name.’
‘Agreed, but this Esther Wilson does have a son called Timothy born in Canterbury in 1982.’
‘That’s extraordinary,’ Georgia said. ‘I wonder if Jennifer knows? Or if Roy or Amelia does? Or come to that, does Tim? It opens up a minefield of possibilities. Does Tim know where his father is? Did he meet Jennifer by chance? What’s Esther’s role in this? Does Tim’s parentage have any relevance to Robert Luckhurst’s murder? All that remains to be seen, but what do we do with the information?’
‘Maddening though it be, I suggest we sit on it for a while. The Tanners don’t come into DI Newton’s investigation, but Tim does, so I’ll tell Mike in case there turns out to be a link. That’s the problem with this case. We can’t fight our way to the truth about Luckhurst’s death until we’ve cleared up whether or not it’s linked to Laura’s. That is,’ Peter amended crossly, ‘if the trial story isn’t the truth. It still could be. After all, it isn’t unknown for our “fingerprints” to be misleading. We’ve assumed that they had a bearing on Luckhurst’s murder, but suppose some Neanderthal man was killed and buried beneath what is now the folly? It could be him reaching out to us.’
‘As the old song goes, smoke gets in your eyes,’ she remarked. ‘But who lit this particular bonfire?’
By the time Georgia reached the office on Monday, Peter had lost some of his ebullience. Suspicious, she thought and slipped away to beard Margaret, his carer, in the kitchen. Margaret simply raised a despairing eyebrow at her, which instantly made Georgia think of trouble from Elena. She proved only partly right.
‘Elena?’ Peter repeated when she asked if her mother was on his mind. ‘Could be.’
‘Because you have or haven’t heard from her?’
‘The latter. That woman’s like buttercups. Lovely to look at, but they creep along underground and spring up in unexpected places.’
He was right. Her mother could indeed coil her way round their hearts and minds, but, Georgia reasoned, only if they allowed her to. How to convince Peter of that, though? There was no way except to fix his mind on something else, she decided. The Clackingtons would do nicely, and she urged him to ring them.
‘Oddly enough,’ Peter told her, ‘I’ve already done so. Dora didn’t seem as keen as we expected, but I’ve fixed for us to go over tomorrow.’
When they arrived, however, the greeting they received was a warm one, although Georgia thought that Dora seemed subdued and her fussing over the delicate ruffles of her chiffon blouse indicated nervousness. Almost immediately she excused herself to return to the kitchen, leaving Gerald in charge.
‘Busy morning here,’ Gerald explained awkwardly. ‘Only lacks Jane Austen dropping in to chair the meeting. You pop into the living room, Georgia, and introduce yourself, and I’ll see you in, Peter.’
Something was certainly going on, but what? Georgia obediently opened the door and found not strangers but Philip and Jake perched on spindly chairs and talking quietly. There was something about the intimacy of the conversation that confirmed for her that they were partners. They seemed oddly matched, however: Jake extrovert and impulsive, Philip typecast as an academic with his long serious face.
Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they simultaneously rose to greet her, save that physically this pair bore no resemblance to Lewis Carroll’s battling characters. As before, it was Jake who came across to kiss her.
‘Great to have you with us, Georgia. Dora said you and Peter might be coming. Peter with you?’
‘On his way round,’ she said, curious about Jake’s choice of words. ‘Have you with us’ sounded more like an event than a casual call.
‘How are your plans for the documentary, Jake?’ she asked as Peter and Gerald appeared through the far doorway.
‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s going ahead as planned. I can’t see any reason that Roy and Tim would want to cancel it,’ Jake said easily. ‘We’ll be tact itself, obviously, but we’re far too much into it for Roy to want to cancel the contract.’
‘And your book, Philip?’ Peter asked.
Philip hesitated, but Jake nodded. ‘We have to move on, Phil. The rules of the game have changed.’
‘We were supposed,’ Phil said awkwardly, ‘to be keeping the subject matter of my book under wraps until Laura had made her announcement. It was a key point in the publicity plans for Stourdens’ future.’
‘Will it still be published in December?’ Georgia asked.
‘I’m discussing it with the publishers. It’s almost as hard to change a book’s publication date as it is a film, but I hope they don’t see any problem.’
He didn’t look happy though, Georgia thought, and she could see his point. Stourdens was still a volatile situation.
‘He’s fussing,’ Jake assured them. ‘We’re still aiming to shoot in late August, and include a shot of Jennifer and Tim’s wedding in September, so why not leave the book as it stands too?’
‘Is the wedding still going ahead?’ Georgia was staggered. There’d been no mention of such imminent wedding plans, and the relationship between Jennifer and Tim seemed wobbly for a romantic wedding in two months’ time.
‘We haven’t heard that it won’t be. Like my film, wedding arrangements tend to be set in stone. Rooms booked, staff booked, guests invited, catering booked.’
Unfortunately, Dora was coming in with a fresh pot of coffee to join them at that moment and must have overheard because she looked aghast. ‘Whatever would Laura have said?’ she moaned.
Jake hastened to reassure her. ‘She loved Stourdens, Dora. She wouldn’t have wanted it to be force-sold for a hotel or knocked down, and so she would have urged us on, and Tim and Jennifer as well, if that’s what they wanted.’
Dora did not look convinced, and Georgia hastened to fill the silence that followed. ‘Are you using Edgar House as well as Stourdens, Jake?’
‘That’s what we’re here for this morning,’ Jake said easily. ‘We’re doing a location walk-through. Phil’s written a guideline script and a suggested continuity schedule. My production designer’s joining us later. Phil and I have only come early so that we could have a squint at the famous letters. I gather that’s what interests you two?’ He looked enquiringly – challengingly? – at Peter and Georgia.
Dora still looked unhappy. ‘I’d been looking forward to being on television,’ she said helplessly, ‘but so soon after Laura’s death . . . my best friend . . .’
She looked at Gerald for support.
‘Jake isn’t filming today, Dollybird. You’ll see – it’ll buck you up a bit,’ he said encouragingly.
‘But, Gerald, there’s the funeral.’
‘Is there news of that?’ Georgia asked.
‘Yes. Roy rang me. The police and coroner have given them the go-ahead. It will be a burial,’ Gerald added awkwardly. ‘I gather he’s planning a public service in St Mary’s at Chilham and then a strictly family burial and gathering afterwards. That’s why poor Dolly’s upset. Family only.’
Georgia could see tears on Dora’s face and well understand why. It seemed a hurtful decision. Even if the burial itself remained private, surely the gathering afterwards could have been widened in scope.
‘I know,’ Dora said bravely, ‘that family wishes have to come first, but I would so like to have been considered part of the family. And why not St Lawrence’s at Godmersham, where Jane Austen herself attended services?’
Gerald cleared his throat. ‘We should get going, Dollybird. We keep the letters upstairs. Face the lift again, can you, Peter?’
‘Looking forward to it,’ Peter said heartily.
He wasn’t, as Georgia knew. He hated lifts, but they were preferable to missing out on something he wanted to see. And he most certainly wanted to see the letters. They had both been studying the lists that Jennifer had provided, and Peter had carried out further research to satisfy himself that from the brief headings they seemed a reasonable coverage of the Austen-Harker story.
‘What are you planning to film here?’ she asked Jake. ‘Just the Assembly Rooms?’
‘No. Phil’s idea, and it’s a good one, is to follow the course of where Jane Austen might have trodden after her post-chaise had deposited her here. So the camera would track her from the point she steps down in the cobbled courtyard and goes with Cassandra into what is now Dora and Gerald’s dining room. Then the door would open and Harker come in.’
This sounded ghastly to Georgia. ‘You’re hiring costumed actors?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Yes, but after we’ve all checked the location we’ll decide whether to film it straight or with depth staging or in-out focus to distance the early nineteenth from the twenty-first-century bits. We might even just see Jane Austen’s feet descending from the chaise.’ He grinned. ‘Sorry, that sounds a real mess, but I need to get the feel of the place first before we fix how to film it. Of course,’ he added, ‘what viewers are always dying to see is where the ladies powdered their noses. Any idea, Dora?’ He put his arm round her and gave her a little hug.
Dora tried hard to enter into the spirit of the thing, but it was clear her heart was not in it. ‘We’re not sure where that was,’ she faltered. ‘She could have withdrawn to a bedroom with a commode. It’s possible it was the one above our dining room where we now keep the letters.’
‘Let’s go, Dora,’ Gerald said firmly and beckoned Peter to follow him.
Georgia accompanied Dora, Jake and Philip up the stairs, where Dora led them to the right, to the room they had bypassed on Georgia’s last visit.
‘Shall we wait for Gerald?’ Dora suggested timidly before entering.
Jake nodded, and Georgia went to join him at the window that overlooked the courtyard beneath. ‘That’s good,’ he said, peering down. ‘We’ll have to get the post-chaise in at the rear but that looks possible.’
‘Oh, here’s Gerald,’ Dora said with relief as he and Peter appeared from the Assembly Rooms. It sounded as though the trip by lift was a major achievement, Georgia thought in amusement, but it was another sign of how upset Dora was.
Gerald opened the door into a small darkened room with shutters over the windows, which he went over to open. Even the light behind her was enough to make Georgia jump as three life-sized figures in the room fooled her into thinking for a moment that they were real. One, unsurprisingly, was of a man in naval costume, and the other two were young women in Regency dress standing either side of the window bay. The walls were full of pictures, but pride of place was given to an elegant antique table bearing a showcase, the glass of which was covered with a black cloth. Dora was back in her element now, standing proudly by it.
‘Shall we, Gerald?’
‘Go ahead, Dollybird.’
Peter eagerly propelled himself forward, but Jake beat him to it. Philip must have seen the letters before while writing his book and so he hung back, while Georgia pressed forward to see what was lying on the black velvet cushion. Two handwritten letters with typed transcripts beneath, plus part of a third letter.
The one on the left, written in heavy ink, was headed 10th November 1802. The paper had yellowed, it had been folded and the edges damaged. ‘My dear Frank,’ Georgia read with some difficulty, and then switched to the transcript for easier reading.
News will no doubt have reached you that Lady Edgar has done me the honour of consenting to become my wife. Circumstances have prevented my conveying these tidings to you earlier. May I beg you to put from your mind, as I do from my own, all thought of Miss Jane Austen, of the precious weeks of autumn, and of the happiness that might have been mine. You will know how limited are my expectations – I have no ship or prospect of one. The great kindness that Lady Edgar has shown me these six months past has long been evident to me, to you and to all who have observed it. I am thus in honour bound to repay it, and to forget that happy day when my eyes fell upon Miss Jane Austen and her sister in your . . .
Whatever followed had been lost, perhaps a second page, but even what was there was quite something, Georgia thought. The writing was uneven, as if done in agitation – as it could well have been. Jake, to whom this must be new material, was giving whoops of delight at what he was reading and only reluctantly swapped places with Georgia.
‘Hold on to your hat. This one’s Jane herself speaking,’ he told her.
The writing in this scrap of a letter was entirely different, smaller and lighter. It was dated 4th November 1802, just after Jane Austen would have reached Steventon from Kent.
My dearest Captain Harker,
The day is near. Pray acquaint me with how you shall arrive at Steventon. Shall you come in yellow stockings cross-gaitered like poor Malvolio? Shall you come with smoke made with the fume of sighs as did Romeo? How shall I greet you? As our dear Lady Disdain at Stourdens or . . .
A week later the mood had changed. The last letter read:
My dear Captain Harker,
I had anticipated your visit to Steventon with pleasure, and had little expected it to be replaced by the happy news of your betrothal to Lady Edgar. I offer you my felicitations. Lady Edgar will recieve [sic] a husband who is the most honourable and sensible of men, and yet I must confess I would wish that sensibility might have prevailed over sense.
I am yours etc
Jane Austen
A put-down indeed. Georgia had recalled reading somewhere that Jane Austen’s spelling varied from today’s norm in respect of ‘ie’ and ‘ei’. She also remembered that Jane Austen’s first novel to be published was an earlier work rewritten and renamed Sense and Sensibility. All too pat? She decided not. The difference between the two Austen letters was convincing enough.
Dora was watching them anxiously, and after Peter had finished reading them she said tentatively, ‘They’re so very moving, aren’t they?’
‘They are indeed,’ Peter replied. ‘I take it you’ve seen the full collection in the folly, Philip? Are the letters there in the same style as these? This –’ he pointed to the incomplete one – ‘is certainly unlike any in the published collections of her letters.’
‘Of course it is,’ Dora said simply before Philip could speak. ‘Because Cassandra destroyed all her other letters between 1801 and 1804, which includes the autumn of 1802 and its aftermath. I believe she was jealous of the love that existed between Jane and William because she loved him herself.’
‘I suspect,’ Philip added, ‘she also destroyed many of Jane’s other letters
, any that reflected Jane’s own feelings. If you’re worried, I can assure you that there is no doubt that Harker was Jane Austen’s great love. It all checks out. The Kent Archives confirm that from 1800 to 1810 the inn was owned by a Francis Harker, and I found references both to him and to his brother in Mrs Warlington’s diary.’
‘Who was she?’ Georgia asked.
‘The wife of a local rector who recorded in her pocket day book that she and her husband had visited the Edgar Arms. They had had the pleasure of meeting Captain William Harker, brother of the landlord, and of hearing about the late war with Napoleon and HMS Rhea. Naval records show that both Rhea and Captain Harker existed.’
‘I take it the letters themselves have been authenticated?’ Peter asked.
‘I can assure you,’ Philip said stiffly, ‘that they have. Everything here and at Stourdens has been authenticated over the years by experts both in Jane Austen and in other relevant aspects.’
‘Of course it has,’ Dora said indignantly. ‘We had ours checked before we bought the house. The ink is correct for 1802; so are the paper and watermarks.’
‘What about the writing and signatures?’
‘Checked by a graphologist for the appearance and by computer for conformity of language,’ Philip confirmed. ‘And the paper is hand dipped with watermarks for 1802 as used in The Watsons. And, incidentally, could I point out that no one would have bothered to fake Jane Austen’s hand before 1806, when resin size was introduced with machine-made paper. Jane Austen’s first novel appeared in 1811. Anything faked thereafter would in all probability have used post-1806 paper.’
Dora regained some of her usual vigour. ‘Why should the story not be genuine?’ she asked querulously. ‘People are all too eager today to favour the negative. Of course there is a need for truth, but there does seem to be a disposition, almost a hope, towards assuming that everything good and interesting about the past must be false. Why can’t we rejoice that Jane had this love affair instead of trying so hard to disprove it?’
