The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen

by Lindsay Ashford

  Praise for Lindsay Ashford’s Megan Rhys novels

  ‘A worthy new talent’ Guardian

  ‘Patricia Cornwell has patented the persona of the doughty heroine who bucks the system… Ashford is closer to her personal demons’ Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian

  ‘Gritty, streetwise and raw… with an authenticity and detail born of Ashford’s own journalistic experience’ Denise Hamilton

  ‘Chilling… Will appeal to those who enjoy the forensic procredurals of Kathy Reichs’ US Library Journal

  THE MYSTERIOUS

  DEATH OF

  MISS AUSTEN

  by

  Lindsay Ashford

  To my children,

  Isabella, Ruth, Deri and Ciaran,

  and to Steve

  ‘There are secrets in all families, you know…’

  Emma, Jane Austen

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-­One

  Chapter Twenty-­Two

  Chapter Twenty-­Three ­

  Chapter Twenty-­Four

  Chapter Twenty-­Five

  Chapter Twenty-­Six

  Chapter Twenty-­Seven

  Chapter Twenty-­Eight

  Chapter Twenty-­Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-­One

  Chapter Thirty-­Two

  Chapter Thirty-­Three

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT HONNO

  Copyright

  9th July 1843

  I have sent him her hair. When I took it from its hiding place and held it to my face I caught the faintest trace of her; a ghost scent of lavender and sun-warmed skin. It carried me back to the horse-drawn hut with its wheels in the sea where I saw her without cap or bonnet for the first time. She shook out her curls and twisted round. My buttons, she said, will you help me? The hut shuddered with the waves as I fumbled. She would have fallen if I hadn’t held her. I breathed her in, my face buried in it; her hair.

  To the ancients it was a potent, magical thing. The Bible calls it the source of a man’s strength and a woman’s allure. How strange that it should have this new power; this ability to bear witness after death. Science tells us it is dead matter, stripped of life long before the body it adorns.

  I suppose he has had to destroy it to reveal its secret; he can have no idea what it cost me to part with it. All that remains are the few strands the jeweller took for the ring upon my finger: a tiny braid, wound into the shape of a tree. When I touch the glass that holds it I remember how it used to spill over the pillow in that great sailboat of a bed. If hair can hold secrets this ring must surely hold mine.

  Now that the deed is done I fear what I have unleashed. This is what he wrote to me yesterday:

  Thank you for entrusting the letter from the late Miss J.A. to my keeping, along with the lock of her hair bequeathed to you. You are quite correct in your belief that medical science now enables the examination of such as has not perished of a corpse with regard to the possibility of foul play.

  Having applied the test recently devised by Mister James Marsh, I have been able to subject the aforementioned sample to analysis at this hospital. The result obtained is both unequivocal and disturbing: the lady, at the time of her demise, had quantities of arsenic in her person more than fifteen times that observed in the body’s natural state.

  You have told me that the persons with whom she dwelt, namely her sister, her mother, a family friend and two servants, all survived her by a decade or more. I must conclude, therefore, that the source of the poison was not any thing common to the household, such as corruption of the water supply. Nor could any remedy the lady received – if indeed arsenic was administered – account for the great quantity present in her hair. It may be conjectured, then, that Miss J. A. was intentionally poisoned.

  This being the case, I need hardly tell you that bringing the perpetrator of such calumny to justice, after a lapse of some six-and-twenty years, would be next to impossible. If, however, you are willing to explain the exact nature of your suspicions to me, I will gladly offer what assistance I can.

  I remain your humble servant, Doctor Zechariah Sillar

  It is a source of some relief to me to know that the disquiet I have felt these many years is not without foundation, though I burn with rage to see it written there as scientific fact. To him her death is nothing more than a curiosity; his interest is piqued and he offers his assistance. I have not even hinted that the guilt lies with someone still living.

  Where would I begin to explain it all? Elizabeth, surely, is the first link in the chain. But how would he see the connection unless he acquainted himself with the family and the secrets at its heart? How could he understand my misgivings without knowing her as I knew her? To weigh it up he would have to see it all.

  But it was not meant for other eyes. I am well aware of the danger of opening this Pandora’s Box. People have called me fanciful. Indeed, I have questioned my own judgment. But the possibility that I might be right makes me more inclined to take this man into my confidence. He has the twin virtues of learning and discretion, and knows nothing of the family. If it is to be seen, there is no one I know who is more suitable than him. The question remains, is it the right thing to do?

  3 January 1827

  Jane’s nephew wrote to me yesterday. He asks me to contribute to a memoir he wishes to compile. I will have to tell him that I cannot – and furnish him with some plausible excuse.

  His letter has unsettled me. Quite apart from the scandal a truthful account would create, the way the request was framed infuriates me. I have thrown the thing away now but the words he used still parrot away inside my head: ‘Although my aunt’s life was completely uneventful, I feel that those who admire her books will be interested in any little details of her tastes, her hobbies, etcetera, that you might care to pass on.’

  Completely uneventful. How can anybody’s life be described as completely uneventful? He wishes, I think, to enfeeble her; to present her to the world as a docile creature whose teeth and claws have been pulled. The respectable Miss Austen; the quiet, pious Miss Austen; the spinster aunt whose only pleasures apart from her writing were needlework and the pianoforte. Meek, ladylike and bloodless. How she would have hated such an epitaph.

  I suppose he believes that I would relish the task of serving her up to the public like a plate of sweetmeats. I hope he lives long enough to understand that one does not have to be young or married to be racked by love and guilt and envy. How affronted he would be if I revealed exactly how I felt about his aunt.

  His letter has had quite a different result from that which he intended. I have decided to make my own record of all that passed between us; a memoir that will never be seen by him or any other member of the family. I will write it for myself, to keep her close, and as a way of releasing what eats away at me. When I am dead Rebecca will find it amongst my pape
rs and she can decide whether to read it or toss it on the fire. My feelings, then, will no longer matter.

  Chapter One

  1805

  When I first met Jane her life, like mine, was an indecipherable work in progress. I had no notion, then, of what she was to become. But in the space of a few weeks she rubbed away the words other hands had scrawled beneath my name and inked me in; made me bitter, passionate, elated, frightened…all the things that make a person jump off the page.

  Godmersham was where I lived in those days, although I never would have called it home, for I belonged neither above stairs nor below. I was one of that strange tribe of half-breeds, a governess. Educated but impoverished. Well-born but bereft of family. To the servants my speech and manners made me a spy who was not to be trusted. To Edward and Elizabeth Austen I was just another household expense. My only true companions were books. Like friends and relatives, they fell into two categories: there were the ones I’d hidden in my bed when the bailiffs came – old familiar volumes that smelled of our house in Maiden Lane – and there were the ones I was permitted to borrow from the Austens’ library. This held many favourites, expensively bound in calf or green morocco, with gilt edging and endpapers of crimson silk. Their pages brought back the voices of all those I had lost.

  Jane arrived at Godmersham on a wet and windy day in the middle of June. I remember the first sight of her, still clad in mourning for her father, her eyes bright with tears as she greeted her brother. The hall was bustling with servants, eager to organise the newcomers, and I could tell from the way she held her head that she found it all rather strange and discomfiting. I saw, too, the way Elizabeth looked her up and down like a housewife buying a goose. Feathers rather too sparse and shabby-looking, I caught her thinking; not really fit for our table.

  Elizabeth Austen had given me a similar look when I first came to Kent. She was heavily pregnant and surveyed me from her armchair, peering over the rim of a teacup that rested on her belly. Her face reminded me of a doll I had when I was a child, a doll with blue glass eyes and real hair whose cold, stiff hands used to poke my flesh when I hugged her.

  ‘Well, Sharp,’ she said, ‘I hope that you will live up to your name. Fanny is a good girl but she’s easily distracted. She needs to be watched not indulged. The boys have no need of you: they are being schooled at Winchester. You may be required to teach Lizzy and Marianne when they are older – if you last.’

  By the summer of 1805 I had lasted a year and a half, during which time Elizabeth had given birth to a boy, fallen pregnant again and been brought to bed with her ninth child, a girl this time. I wondered if I would still be at Godmersham when this little creature was old enough to take lessons, and how many more babies would arrive in the meantime.

  The day Jane came I was standing at the top of the stairs, high above the gilded columns and marble friezes, holding the older children at bay until the formalities were over. But Fanny, who was twelve and the leader of the pack, broke free and hurled herself at her aunt, knocking Jane’s black straw bonnet backwards. I remember fragments of laughter drifting up to me with the smell of wet grass and horses that had followed her in. She wrapped her arms around the child and hugged her like a saviour. I felt a stab of jealousy, for Fanny was more than just a pupil. She was the reason for my existence.

  Fanny had become the closest thing to a daughter I could ever have imagined. I used to think about it often in those days, what it would be like to have a child of my own. Just one. Not a great brood, like Elizabeth’s, for I saw how it was for her, a clever woman turned idle by her own body. No wonder she was irritable with those who served her; no wonder she sometimes looked at me with spiteful eyes. Perhaps she wished that she had been born plain, like me. Perhaps she wished she had not married a devil-dodger’s son who loved ladies as long as they knew their place.

  ‘Who taught you to think, Miss Sharp?’ Those were the first words her husband spoke to me when I entered his house. I had been there a week without our paths crossing, which not unusual in a house of such grand proportions. I was coming into the hall by the door opposite the frieze of Artemis and the huntsmen; he was standing on the second tread of the staircase, which made him almost my height but not quite.

  ‘My father, sir,’ I replied, smiling at the courtesy he showed in addressing me. I thought he called me ‘Miss’ because he had known of me before I became his employee. But I was wrong about that. The prefix was used only to convey his displeasure.

  ‘Indeed? I cannot believe that your father was a follower of that Wollstonecraft woman, so I can only assume you are the disciple. I will not have you filling my daughter’s head with such errant nonsense!’ He was not looking at me as he said this. His eyes were on the window, through which Elizabeth could be seen walking with a gentleman whose identity was not yet known to me.

  ‘I am sorry if anything Fanny has repeated has caused offence to you,’ I began. He made no reply, still looking away from me. His face looked very red against the white wig. A little of the powder had fallen from it, riming one eyebrow like frost on grass. I was very afraid of offending him. His silence made me panic. What I said next was ill-judged; it came from my heart, not my head: ‘Am I wrong in trying to give her thinking powers, sir? I’m sure you would not wish her go out into the world as a tulip in a garden, to make a fine show but be good for nothing.’

  ‘Better a tulip than a trollop!’ He muttered it under his breath but loud enough for me to hear. I thought I was about to be sent packing.

  He was halfway to the door when he turned and said: ‘All that I wish for Fanny is that she should have a sound head and a warm heart. Shakespeare, Fénelon and Fordyce’s Sermons: that is all she needs in the way of improving literature. They were good enough for my wife and they are good enough for my daughter.’

  I was very careful after that, but I wanted more for Fanny than her father had in mind. While she was debarred from all the possibilities open to her brothers, I was determined she should be every bit as well-educated. If marriage and motherhood were the only parts she was to be allowed to play she must develop abilities that would exact respect. Ignorant as I was of the married state, I believed that although Edward loved his wife, he did not respect her. How could he, when she was reduced to a role that differed little from that of his cattle and pigs? I vowed that Fanny would grow up to be a very different sort of woman.

  The fault in all of this was my own pride. I saw myself as Fanny’s champion and closest ally. I feared any challenger and that made me resentful of Jane when she first arrived at Godmersham. Fanny was impossible to teach in the days that followed her arrival. All her talk was of Aunt Jane. Clearly she worshipped this woman and I wanted to know why. I found myself watching Jane at every available opportunity.

  I remember one afternoon, that first week of her stay, when I got a glimpse of what the child found so beguiling. I had taken Fanny and the older boys – who were home for the holidays – to spend their allotted hour in the company of their mother, who was entertaining Jane and the other Austen ladies in the salon. They made a strange group, Elizabeth so elegant and expensively dressed; Jane and Cassandra in the garb of a pair of old maids, even though they were no older than she; and their mother, Mrs Austen, who looked perfectly neat until she opened her mouth, from which several of her front teeth were missing.

  Cassandra suggested they should play riddles. I was at the other end of the salon, trying to amuse the children with a game of spillikins. Forced inside early that day by the weather, they sat fidgeting, smelling of dogs and damp wool. When they got wind of what the grown-ups were doing they all wanted to join in.

  Elizabeth raised a languid, jewelled hand to ruffle the head of George, her second boy, who had seized a pencil and paper. ‘This is much too hard for little heads! Go back to your game!’ With grumpy faces they did as they were bid, but listened all the same as the verses were read aloud.

  Elizabeth was quite put out when George called the answer
to her riddle while everyone else was still writing it down. Mrs Austen’s was more obscure but Jane managed to guess it after a few minutes’ thought. When it came to her turn she spoke the lines in a clear, strong voice:

  ‘Three letters form me while I’ve breath,

  Though, newborn, I had four;

  But if you e’er put me to death,

  You must give me three more.’

  After ten minutes of frowns and scribbling, no one could furnish an answer. Five minutes more and the children were tugging at her sleeves, begging her to reveal it. She beckoned Fanny to her and whispered in her ear. ‘Now,’ she said to the others, ‘go back over there and you will have a charade.’

  A few seconds of Fanny crawling about on all fours crying Baa! brought them close to the answer. ‘No, not sheep, you simpletons!’ the child cried, ‘It’s ewe! E-w-e! A ewe is born a lamb and if you kill her she becomes mutton!’ Jumping to her feet, she said: ‘What a brain you have, Aunt Jane! I wish I could be like you!’

  From where I sat I had a good view of Elizabeth’s face. Her eyes narrowed and she drew in her lips. Jealousy, I guessed. In that respect Elizabeth and I were very much alike. She did not like being outshone by her husband’s sister, while I wanted Fanny to admire my brain, not her aunt’s.

  There was something else about Jane that drew my attention in those first few days. There was something very familiar in her appearance. I felt I had seen her somewhere before, even though I knew this was most unlikely, for I had never visited Bath, where she lived. It came to me all of a sudden in the salon as I watched her reading out her riddle. She was a female version of Henry Austen, the man I had seen walking in the garden with Elizabeth a few days after my arrival in Kent.