Jane and the Genius of the Place

by Stephanie Barron

  “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.

  “ASHES?” MRS. SALKELD STOOD ARRESTED IN MIDstride, 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 sh
e 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 WILLown, 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.

  I examined the rest of the fragments in a desultory manner, conscious of an allusion that had escaped me. What was it? Affection? Promise? Nothing to do with those; they were words so debased by the traffic of every day, as to have lost any charge of meaning. Death, then—it must strike any reader dumb with its awful truth. And perhaps the word chemise.

  Mrs. Grey, indeed, had found death in her chemise.

  I shivered from a cold that owed nothing to the rain, and looked sharply once more at the fragments of paper.

  The fractured words, it is true, could tell me little. But I had neglected to consider of the hand.

  A firm hand, and yet light in its strokes, like the finest sort of engraving. There was the S, scrawled distinct in the—mise, like a sail unfurled on a t’gallant yard. I had seen this hand before, tho’ only briefly. It was the distinctive sloping script of the Gentleman Improver, Julian Sothey.

  1 Jane Walker Leigh (1704-68) was Jane Austen’s maternal grandmother. —Editor’s note.

  24 August 1805, cont’d.

  TOWARDS NOON MY BROTHERS RETURNED FROM THE Hoop & Griffin in Deal—travel-weary, drenched to the skin, and quite put out of humour.

  Denys Collingforth’s body had revealed nothing of the nature of his murderer, and far too much of the grisly manner of his demise. Henry, I understood from several delicate intimations of the Justice’s, had been quite sick for a quarter-hour together, and could not be brought to look upon the corpse again; Neddie had only suffered it through the application of a handkerchief to the nose, and a stout brandy to the stomach.

  The cords of the neck were severed quite through, my brother told me, and must have spattered the murderer’s clothes in the cutting. Neddie had hired a team of local labourers to dredge the millpond whence the body was recovered, and scour the surrounding underbrush, in the faint hope of discovering the murderer’s discarded clothing, which might yet bear a tailor’s or a launderer’s mark; but he held out very little hope of their discovery. A clever man, who had planned Collingforth’s death, might as easily have carried a change of clothes, and burned the bloodied ones along the way. Or he might simply have disguised his sins with a voluminous driving cape until achieving the sprawl of London. There any amount of refuse might be discarded undetected.

  “And how was Collingforth’s body recognised in Deal?” Lizzy enquired, a faint line of confusion between her brows.

  “He had been seen in that town on Thursday morning, by one of his acquaintance—a Mr. Pembroke, not unknown among the Sporting Set. As I understand it, Pembroke makes a tidy profession of cheating at cards, Lizzy; and Collingforth was formerly intimate with him. He espied Collingforth loitering in a doorway in a shabby part of town, looking quite desperate; and as Pembroke could not believe him capable of murder— he had heard the news of Mrs. Grey’s death, and the result of Wednesday’s inquest—he undertook to shield his old friend. He carried Mr. Collingforth away to his rooms, and kept him there, drinking brandy until after dark. Poor Collingforth was almost beside himself at the news of the charge laid against him, Pembroke said— and they agreed that the best course he might adopt, was to get himself away to the Continent. The Downs anchorage is at Deal, you know—and Pembroke charged his friend with buying a passage on any ship that might soon weigh anchor, and be away. Indeed, he pressed some money upon Collingforth for that express purpose, although he declined the office of arranging the matter for him—Pembroke was loath to entangle himself in the flight of a man charged with murder.”

  “As he was quick to point out to Mr. Justice Austen,” I murmured, amused. “Have you questioned this fellow narrowly, Neddie? He seems entirely too plausible. Might he not have helped Mr. Collingforth into the millpond, for a small consideration between friends?”

  “I am before you, Jane,” my brother retorted with a smile; �
�I have learned, independent of Mr. Pembroke, that he parted from Collingforth at ten o’clock. His landlady—an elderly, quite disinterested personage— was required to bar the door behind the two men, and found them utterly disguised with drink. Pembroke met with an acquaintance in the street, who bore him away to a cockfight, and remained in his company some hours; Collingforth, much muffled as a surety against discovery, set off towards the Downs anchorage. That is the last that Pembroke saw of him—until learning by chance that a murdered man had been found on Friday, and was lying at the Hoop & Griffin, he stopped to view the corpse.”

  We were all silent an instant, in consideration.

  “And so Mr. Collingforth never booked his passage,” I mused. “One is compelled to wonder why. Was he afraid of discovery?—Or discovered, in fact, between the time he parted from friend Pembroke, and fetched up at the quai’s steps?”

  “If the landlady may be believed, and Collingforth was decidedly in wine, he cannot have posed much resistance,” Henry observed sombrely. “Two stout fellows— or even one in his right senses—might have bagged him as easily as a bird.”

  “I cannot think that many of the townsfolk should have recognised him,” Lizzy objected. “Deal is above sixteen miles from his home at Prior’s Farm! He cannot often have had occasion to go there.”

  Neddie shrugged. “Denys Collingforth was generally to be found wherever there was a matter of sport—or a wager that might be laid against it. I should not be surprised to learn that he was known, among certain circles, in every town in Kent. And you forget, my dear, that he was a hunted man. I posted an offer of one hundred pounds for his retrieval, unharmed—a handsome sum, in the eyes of many.”