Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles

by Joanna Campbell Slan

First I would need to learn more about Selina.

  How? Interviewing each person increased the risk of my exposure. Even Emma seemed cautious when I asked her questions.

  There had to be a better way.

  I could assign the Seniors an essay to test their German skills. The subject would be their friend Selina. They would write down their thoughts so I could see their skill level—and share their notes with Mr. Douglas.

  With a plan in place, my thoughts circled back to Edward. Mrs. Thurston expressly forbade me to correspond with him, but her authority meant nothing to me. I would write him and give the letter to Lucy to mail. Even though he was joining me soon, and realizing that the letter might not arrive before he left Ferndean, I knew he could enjoy it later—and writing it would go a long way toward helping me sort through my thoughts. With that intention, I put pen to paper, but the distraction of Emma’s industry caused my mind to stray.

  In desperation, I pulled the modesty screen around me. The resulting privacy pleased me even though the lump in my bed still confounded all my attempts at comfort. My makeshift “walls” allowed me to block out my environment. At length, Emma’s footfalls told me she had quitted the room. However, the screen provided me a sense of separation from my surroundings. With my mind freed of these restrictions, I wrote:

  Dearest Husband,

  I hope this finds you well. I trust that you are taking care to rest for the sake of your vision.

  I miss you more than words can express. At night, I reach for you and when I discover—alas!—I am alone, I think my heart will burst with pain. I miss our conversations, our daily rituals, and of course, I miss your affection. It is comforting to think that you will be here in London soon.

  When I came to visit Adèle, I was surprised to see that Nan Miller, a teacher from Lowood, now serves here as head teacher. One would think that should alleviate our fears, but I admit the situation perplexes me. The new superintendent, Mrs. Thurston, is not the sort of woman who sets the proper tone for a school. Because we met under trying circumstances, I struggle to be fair to her. However, so far she has failed to impress me.

  Complications abound. The choice of replacement for Mrs. Webster is but one problem. The other problem—and I hesitate to tell you lest you be unduly alarmed—involves the death of a schoolgirl.

  Right now Adèle is not at risk. If the situation changes, rest assured that I shall take the necessary actions to secure her safety and well-being.

  Please let Ned know that his mother misses him terribly.

  All my love—

  Your Jane

  P.S. Tell Mrs. Fairfax she was right. Next time I shall take heed of her suggestions regarding the importance of fashionable clothing when one is in London. Perhaps Lucy and I shall go shopping while I am here.

  I folded the paper and tucked it inside my bodice. The note succeeded in making me feel closer to Edward, but it also brought a pang of guilt. Was I really that confident that Adèle was safe?

  And then the concern that I had pushed to the back of my mind demanded my attention: What on earth was I going to do about the missing Rochester diamonds?

  Chapter 30

  The bell rang and I descended the stairs to start my duties as a teacher. One by one, the Juniors filed past me, heads up and shoulders rolled back, their erect posture guaranteed by the backboards they wore. My five students took their spots on the benches in the lecture room. I asked them to introduce themselves while I took note of their names.

  Elizabeth Morrow was the Junior head girl, her intelligent eyes at odds with her squirrel-like inflated cheeks. Mary Tolliver squirmed in her seat, unable to keep her spindly frame still as she twirled a curl of yellow hair around and around her finger. Winifred Dalton-James seemed a jolly sort, whose bright smile rarely wavered. Victoria Falmouth wore a sad frown under a sprinkling of freckles. Patience Chesterfield sat like two stone blocks, set one over the other, solid and thick, broken up only by a tumbling mane of dark hair.

  The German primers sat on the bookcase near the front desk. I asked Elizabeth to pass them out, then I instructed the girls to get their slates ready.

  The last girl in the row, Patience, stared at me with empty hands and a bovine placidity.

  “Are we missing one?” I asked as the predictable cloud of chalk dust settled. The wet stone–like scent of the girls’ blackboards filled the air as they steadied them on their laps.

  Elizabeth said, “Ma’am? I bet Selina put her book in her dresser.”

  “But she wasn’t in your form. So how do you know this?”

  “Everyone knows what Selina was like, miss!” said Mary. “Selina hated Fräulein Hertzog and hated German, too. She was always hiding books from the teachers. Because we all use the same books, we were always one short. But it is all right, Miss Eyre. Patience can have mine. Winnie and I can share.”

  Mary handed hers to Patience, scooted closer to Winnie, and took ahold of one side of the textbook’s cover.

  “If Selina hid the German textbook, where might it be?” I asked.

  “She usually kept textbooks in her dresser under her things. It’s probably still there, next to that bottle of perfume she liked and that bath powder. The one that smelled like camellias. Fräulein Hertzog would send her out of class to get her book. Selina would take her time and visit the kitchen or wander about.”

  “She liked to steal biscuits from the larder. But she wasn’t the only one who did. Cook got awful angry but could not stop her,” Patience chimed in, speaking so slowly I wanted to nap between words.

  The other student, Victoria, remained silent and stared straight ahead during this cataloging of Selina’s misbehavior.

  When I gave the children a sentence to translate, and the skritch-skritch-skritch of chalk on the boards accompanied the students’ efforts, Victoria continued to sit quietly. Catching my eyes on her, she said, “I can’t write. It’s my hand, you see,” and she held up her right arm and pushed up her sleeve to display a white wrapping.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  Sly glances flew from one student to another. One snickered.

  “I got hurt.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “I got bitten.” She paused and held up two fingers on her left hand. “Twice.”

  “Bitten? By that cat in the kitchen?”

  “No, Miss Eyre. Old Mephisto stays with Cook. He bites and scratches everyone but her and us girls. I got bit by a person.”

  “You say a person? Goodness. Who was it?”

  Victoria dropped her head to examine the tucks on her pinafore before mumbling something.

  “Pardon?” I asked. “What did you say?”

  Her bench mate Patience sent Victoria an expression of sympathy. Behind her tablet she grabbed Victoria’s uninjured hand and squeezed. It was only for a second, but the flesh-to-flesh contact seemed to bolster Victoria’s spirits.

  “Selina did it to her, miss,” said Patience, slowly.

  Victoria’s lower lip trembled. “Selina got mad and bit me. And then she bit me again. For good measure.”

  “Oh my!” In my years of teaching, I’d never heard of children older than infants biting one another. “I’m sure Mrs. Thurston had something to say about that!”

  Elizabeth rested a fist on her hip and harrumphed, sounding more like a parent than an eleven-year-old girl. “Nothing happened to her! Nothing ever did! Selina never got punished! She was Mrs. Thurston’s favorite!”

  The head girl rolled her eyes and screwed her mouth into a moue of disgust. Now the cork was out of the bottle, and Elizabeth had plenty to say. “Mrs. Thurston thought Selina made the sun come up in the morning and the moon glow at night, she did. Selina was her favorite for sure. She could get away with anything. Because she had a special friend.”

  “Selina had a special friend?” I repeated. Finally, a piece of information worth sharing with Mr. Douglas.

  “Right,” Mary said, arching her eyebrows. “Prinny.”
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br />   I wondered who Prinny was, and I planned to ask Mr. Douglas and Lucy if they knew.

  “Is that so?” I tried to recover my authority, but I must admit, this new revelation caused my head to spin. Was there no one in this school who’d stood up to Selina?

  “Mrs. Thurston said I was to blame,” sniveled Victoria. “She said that if Selina bit me, I must have deserved it awful bad, and I should be ashamed of myself. But I did not deserve it. I swear to you, miss! I only asked Selina real polite-like not to take all the strawberry jam. I said please, too. And she said, ‘Why? Because you are hungry? I am hungry, too. I will show you.’ Then she bared her teeth, grabbed my arm, and bit me hard. When I cried, she said, ‘I will give you something to cry about,’ and she bit me again.”

  “Oh.” That was the best I could muster.

  Why had Mrs. Thurston allowed the girl to behave in such an outrageous manner? Favoritism occurs naturally in every environs, but most particularly when adults mix with children. In my experience, children who purposefully curry favor receive it. But by all accounts Selina flouted basic niceties.

  “I believe we have talked enough about Selina, God rest her soul. Let’s get to work.” I changed from English to German and gave the girls a few simple commands.

  In short order, I concluded that my predecessor had been either negligent or incompetent. Or possibly both. Not a one of the students could respond to any of my requests. Nor could they conjugate a verb. When I asked them to translate a simple sentence from English into German, they failed miserably.

  “Let us begin at the beginning,” I said, offering them a simple guten Tag.

  Relieved of the need to conjure up skills they clearly lacked, the girls responded by working hard. The rest of our time moved along at a satisfying pace. At the twelve o’clock chime, I followed my students to the dining room for our luncheon. Nan Miller’s chair sat empty. Mrs. Thurston thundered her way through a prayer of thanksgiving for the food. As she did, I thought I caught a whiff of alcohol.

  Surely not. Your imagination runs away with you, I told myself.

  Cold meat slices and cheeses sat on the sideboards. Fresh bread with brown crust sent a yeasty warm fragrance into the air. I took the end portion of the loaf, plus a slice of cheese and a bit of apple, and resumed my seat just as Miss Miller hurried into the room. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her manner agitated. From half a table away, I heard the rattle of the teapot against her cup as she poured for herself.

  Mrs. Thurston leaned toward my friend and whispered a question.

  Miss Miller shrank back. She shook her head emphatically and guided a shaky spoonful of sugar to her tea. Mrs. Thurston still did not relent. The words were lost to me, but the import wasn’t. The superintendent wore the same expression as a terrier when it clenches a rat between its teeth. My friend looked the part of the rodent.

  I wondered anew—if Selina had been her favorite, where were Mrs. Thurston’s outward signs of grief?

  Miss Jones leaned toward me and whispered, “Mr. Waverly came. Again. He questioned Mrs. Thurston once more and asked to see the place Selina’s body was found. Again. I heard him puttering around overhead while I taught.”

  That must have happened while I held my first German class.

  “He questioned Mrs. Thurston?”

  “Yes, but I think that he primarily came to interview Miss Miller again. Took her right out of class. They were in Mrs. Thurston’s office for an hour. It must have been terrifying for her.”

  “Did they question anyone else?”

  Miss Jones raised an eyebrow. “No. I know he intends to talk to Adela, but he had to leave abruptly. I don’t know why. He asked me a few questions, of course. But I had nothing new to tell him. I suffer terribly from sick headaches. The night Selina died, I’d taken my medication and fallen asleep quickly. The door to the Junior dormitory stayed shut all night. The children know to wake me if they need me, or to go get one of the other proctors, but none did. So I am of no interest to them. However, Miss Miller is.”

  “Oh?”

  “This is not the first time one of her schoolchildren has died.”

  “But that was typhus!” My mind flooded with wretched images of my schoolmates dying. I added hastily, “Many of the students took ill with the contagion at Lowood. It is true that the poor living conditions led to more deaths than one might normally expect, but it was still a natural phenomenon. Surely the police cannot blame Miss Miller for that.”

  “Typhus, you say? At the charitable institution? What a ghastly situation. But no, that was not the rationale for his inquiry. I refer to the other incident.”

  Other incident? I choked on a bite of my bread. After coughing repeatedly, I finally dislodged the piece. What was Miss Jones talking about? I must have misunderstood. She could not be suggesting that Miss Miller had been involved in yet another student’s death. Could she?

  More importantly, what didn’t I know about Nan Miller’s past that I needed to know?

  As so often happens, the girls sensed a conversation that was not fit for their ears. Nettie, Rose, Rufina, and Adèle all turned their attention to us. I lifted my teacup with both hands to control the tremor, and after a fortifying sip, I changed the subject and addressed the listeners directly. “Girls, I am planning for us to take our sketching class out of doors, where we can study birdlife. How does that sound?”

  “Hurrah!” cheered Rufina. “Can we go to Hyde Park?”

  “That is exactly what I had in mind. You will have to help me with the Juniors, however. Can you do that?”

  “I have a little brother at home,” lisped Nettie. “When Mama lets me, I help with him. The Juniors will not be any trouble, miss.”

  The girls wriggled with enthusiasm.

  “How lucky you are to have a reason to take the girls outside. I so enjoy doing plein air watercolors, but since my duties here keep me indoors, I rarely get the chance.” Miss Jones pouted.

  “Mademoiselle and I loved to watch the birds at Thornfield. The antics of crows in the farmers’ fields amused us greatly. John—he’s our manservant—he kept a rookery in one of the towers. Such noisy birds. And so smart!” Adèle babbled happily to her friends.

  “My, but you have a lot of patience with her. Was she as flighty then as she is in the classroom?” Miss Parthena cast a glance at Adèle.

  “On occasion,” I said, as a spike of loyalty to my student caused a burn in my cheeks.

  “That is the French for you. A nation of pompous fools lacking self-control. Oh, they prance about, shouting for brotherhood and equality, but since they fall on their knees to worship the Pope—who is nothing more than a doddering old man wearing a red gown—one finds it hard to believe they understand God’s basic command to love Him first. Much less following His secondary edict that we should love one another. And all this talk about equality? So a cat can not only look at a queen, it can aspire to be one? What nonsense. We are born into a class and cannot rise above it. And beyond the limitations society imposes on us because of our low birth, women like us are forced to bear the burden of men’s shameful impulses. If we are not gifted with beauty or youthful charms, then we have nothing to barter.”

  “Yes, well…” I could not formulate a proper response. Miss Jones’s opinions were as oversized as the rest of her.

  Fortunately, the remainder of the conversation did not require my participation. She prattled on regardless of my attention, while I let my mind wander back to the strange events at the school, until one of Miss Jones’s comments nearly knocked me off my chair.

  She lowered her voice a half an octave, presumably out of deference to the presence of the girls. “I count myself fortunate to be a teacher at a school rather than a governess. So often, a governess is naught but a plaything for the master of the house or his sons. They use and discard young women like they were pieces of blotting paper. Quite disgusting.”

  How I longed to set Parthena Jones straight!

  Chapter 3
1

  That afternoon, we set off for the park, the nine students—five Junior and four Senior girls—and I. When I spotted Lucy Brayton, her brother Bruce Douglas, and the merry little Rags sitting on the bench at Hyde Park, I waved in greeting. Rags jumped to his feet and barked happily, his tiny body shivering with joy as he displayed a fashionable set of apparel that outshone mine. His navy blue patent leather collar particularly proved adorable, and the students flocked around him.

  Lucy had met Adèle and the other girls once before, when she’d invited the classmates to her house for tea when Adèle first came to London. But it had been a while, so the students were a little shy around her at first.

  Lucy formally introduced her brother. Mr. Douglas endeared the girls by offering his hand and bidding each of them a solemn, “How do you do?” Rose stared at him with unabashed admiration. When it came her turn to say, “Hello,” she presented Mr. Douglas with a winsome smile and sank into a deep curtsy.

  Give her a few years, and she will be a society darling, I decided.

  Too quickly, the meeting became a contest, a jousting match. Half the girls were clearly in awe of Lucy and her fine clothes. The compliments flew thick and heavy.

  The other half of the girls doted on Rags, who responded with cheerful snuffles and licks.

  All the girls cast covert glances at Mr. Douglas, painfully conscious of him and shy all at once. This signified their awakening womanhood, when the presence of a man caused contradictory emotions.

  Lucy gave the girls her complete attention, and very quickly, the younger children felt at ease, admiring her parasol and stroking the silk flounces on her dress. Victoria wiggled herself into a spot right next to Lucy. Rose sniffed the air. “What is that lovely smell? Gardenias? My mama likes them, too. I like lilacs more.”

  “Do you?” Lucy asked. “We shall have to wait until next spring for them. That seems very far away, doesn’t it?”

  Nettie buried her face in Rags’s coat. Rose managed a spot next to Mr. Douglas’s knee.