“Several novels, I think. And she contributed to James Austen-Leigh’s memoir of Jane Austen. He called Catherine ‘a channel of biographical information,’ although she was born after Jane died.”
“Okay, that’s Edith and Catherine. But the letter—what did it say?”
“Most of it was information Edith wanted her father to have about Francis’ time on the brig Lark. It was part of a squadron that escorted Princess Caroline of Brunswick to England for her disastrous marriage to the prince regent. ”
“Mmm. Interesting, but . . .”
“Yes, I know, nothing new there. But right at the end, she tells her father about a chest of papers she found in the garret. She thought it had belonged to his mother—”
“Ah, to Catherine, who wrote the first completion, claiming it to be according to Jane’s plan!”
“Exactly.”
“So if Catherine had been talking to her aunt Cassandra, who knew Jane better than anyone else in the world, and Cassandra told her niece how Jane had planned to finish the novel and Catherine wrote it down . . .”
Richard smiled. He loved it when Elizabeth’s enthusiastic imagination took over. And he had been thinking along similar lines himself.
“Richard!” Elizabeth leaned forward. “That stuff you were going through this morning—that couldn’t have been the cache Edith found, could it?”
“Sadly, no. For one thing, Edith’s letter wouldn’t have been in it, would it?”
“Oh.”
“Also,” he continued, “most of what we found so far seems to date from the mid-1900s. A lot of it is stuff somebody collected—old guidebooks to Jane Austen sites, maps, reviews of Austen biographies, things like that. Then there’s some original work—at least, it appeared to be original. Looked like research papers on Regency topics, some short stories written more or less in Jane’s style. It will take awhile to read and evaluate it all.”
“Could the short stories be by Edith?”
“It’s possible. I suppose a scholar will need to compare the styles, get the paper and ink analyzed. They may be of interest.”
“But no real monetary value?”
Richard shook his head. “Not worth breaking and entering and committing assault and battery, at my guess.”
“So you’re thinking that letter is the only thing of real importance?”
Richard nodded. “Unless there was more and the thief got it.”
“Or maybe he/she did want the letter, but overlooked it. Although, I can’t see why it would be important enough to hit anybody over the head.”
Elizabeth was quiet as she finished the last of the roasted shallots and beetroot that accompanied her goat cheese tart. “Oh, that was scrumptious. Now I need a cup of tea.”
The waiter was quick to fulfill her request. After her first sip, she continued, “You know what’s really bothering me?”
Richard raised his eyebrows in query.
“Who knew?” Elizabeth asked.
“Who knew what?”
“Well, that is rather a separate question, isn’t it, since we don’t know what they were looking for. But assuming it was something in that box, who knew about the anonymous donation?”
“Well, the staff at the Centre, I suppose,” Richard began.
“And the person who donated it,” Elizabeth added.
“But if they discovered there was something in the box they didn’t mean to give away, why not just walk in and ask for it back?”
“Apparently they wanted to remain anonymous.” Elizabeth wrinkled her brow. “And if it was someone who worked there, they could have volunteered to help sort the stuff. No need for violence.”
Richard was still mulling over possible answers to the very pertinent question when Elizabeth took another tack. “So where was this garret?”
“What garret?”
“The garret where your Edith found those papers she wrote to her father about. I realize it’s more than a hundred years ago, but what if they’re still there? There could be some original Austen letters or manuscripts. It’s possible, isn’t it? And that would be worth hitting someone over the head for.”
“Chawton.”
“Really? You’re sure?”
Richard nodded. “That’s what she wrote. In the upper right-hand corner of her letter, before the date.” And now Richard, who was known for his phlegmatic calm, felt a frisson of excitement. A visit to Jane Austen’s home in Chawton was next on their itinerary when they finished in Bath. Could they be on the trail of a major literary find?
Elizabeth sighed. “So many questions. I wish we knew who donated that box.” She finished her tea and pushed the cup away, indicating her satiety. “But then, suppose the whole thing has nothing to do with old documents—or even with Jane. Suppose it was personal against Claire?”
Richard sincerely hoped not. Random violence in pursuit of information or money was bad enough, but a personal vendetta seemed even worse.
Chapter 6
THE NEXT DAY, ELIZABETH felt less worried about their friend when she and Richard stopped in at the Centre and were greeted by a smiling Robert Sheldrake, who informed them that Claire had been dismissed from hospital and hoped to be back to work Monday morning.
Richard went into the shop while Elizabeth stayed in the foyer with Robert. It was her first time to talk to the soft-spoken, sandy-haired, bearded assistant. He seemed kind and inoffensive, but Elizabeth wondered. Did he covet Claire’s job? Enough to try to scare her off? Surely the man they encountered on the street that night hadn’t had a beard.
“She’s very anxious to get to work on the display of the new material. The old guidebooks and brochures will be just the thing for a case in our lecture room upstairs. Arthur is in her office poring over them now,” Robert said.
“And the letter?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, yes. Pride of place for that, I’m sure. As soon as it’s back.”
“Back?”
“Has to be authenticated first. I’ll be sending it off to the British Library. It’s an easy-enough process. Just looking at it under an ultraviolet light should give a good idea of the dating.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea yet who donated the material?”
Robert smiled, exhibiting a dimple in his left cheek. “Not a clue. But we are extremely grateful. Most excitement we’ve had here for ages.” Then he seemed to realize his remark could be misunderstood. “Oh, er—I didn’t mean the break-in. Poor Claire. I meant—”
Elizabeth raised her hand. “Don’t worry; I understand. You were speaking academically.”
He gave her a grateful, dimpled smile.
Richard purchased a selection of maps and guides and returned to her side. “There, I think I’m well-armed for our tour now. Muriel offered to take us around, but I assured her we’d be fine on our own today.”
Elizabeth smiled her gratitude. A day alone with Richard was exactly what she wanted.
On the top step, they met Geraldine coming up the street at a speed that had her out of breath. She started when she saw them. “Oh, hello.” Her hand went to her flying red hair in an attempt to calm it. “Were you coming to work with Arthur? I thought he might need help, so I . . .” She stopped to catch her breath.
“No,” Richard assured her. “I’m afraid I’ve rather abandoned him in favor of searching out the sites where Jane lived in Bath. I’m sure he’d be happy to have your help.”
“If you’ve completed your own work, that is,” Elizabeth was hasty to add. “We wouldn’t want to distract you. If you think Richard should stay—”
“No!” Gerri colored slightly at her own vehemence. “I mean, I managed a thorough job yesterday. Started with the Abbey. Jane must have gone there some, although she only refers to attending Chapel.”
“Goodness, that sounds low church for Jane.” Elizabeth was puzzled.
“The Octagon Chapel, she meant. In Milsom Street. It was a very fashionable church in Jane Austen’s day. She alwa
ys engaged a pew there for as long as they stayed in the city. She hired it at the same time as they hired their lodgings. In the nineteenth century, it became an antique business. Now it’s used for concerts and art shows.”
“How sad that it’s not still a church,” Elizabeth commented and started to walk on, but it seemed that Gerri needed to prove she had done her homework. Perhaps she thought they would chastise her for playing hooky, as Dr. Greystone surely would.
“And then I went to Walcot Church.” She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with a jab of her finger. “It was quite a hike, but well worth it. That’s where Jane’s parents were married and her father is buried, you know. St. Swithin’s. It was the parish church of Georgian Bath. The only eighteenth-century parish church left in the city—”
“Well, I hope your work today will be as successful.” Richard cut her off, stepping aside and holding the door open for Gerri to enter. Elizabeth felt that if he had been wearing a hat, he would have tipped it like a Regency gentleman.
Gerri stepped around the life-size figure of a Regency lady on the doorstep and scurried inside.
“That poor mouse,” Elizabeth said as Richard directed their steps on up Gay Street. “I think she lives in mortal fear of Muriel eating her.”
“She really doesn’t have anything to fear. Muriel’s bark is much worse than her bite. I think she sees real potential in Gerri and wants to bring out the best in her.”
“Hm. I suppose you’re right, but I’m not sure browbeating her is the best way to go about it.”
“Now.” Richard pulled a map from his pocket and held it so they could both see. “What do you think? Shall we attempt to approach this chronologically and see the places in the order Jane lived in them, or just go with the geography?”
Elizabeth considered. “Geography, definitely. I’m only walking up this hill once.”
At 25 Gay Street, they stopped before the deep blue door of the dental surgeon’s office now occupying the rooms which Jane, her mother, and sister rented after Mr. Austen’s death. Elizabeth smiled at the net curtain covering the window and the brilliant red and white flowers filling the window box of what must have been Mrs. Austen’s parlour.
“Do you think Jane was working on The Watsons when they lived here?” she asked.
“If those who say the shock of her father’s death contributed to her abandoning the manuscript are correct, she would have put it away by the time they lived here.”
“Do you think Jane was very unhappy here?” Elizabeth thought it seemed a pleasant-enough location now.
Richard took another map from his pocket. “I brought my cheat sheet.” He grinned and unfolded a map of Bath in the time of Jane Austen, giving comments on each location from her letters and novels.
“Well, other than her general dislike of living in a busy city, she doesn’t seem to object to the location.”
Elizabeth, reading over his shoulder, laughed. “Certainly not, if it wasn’t beneath Sir Walter Elliot’s dignity to visit the Crofts living here. What a good example of Jane writing about what she knew.”
At the top of Gay Street, they entered The Circus, a circle formed by three neoclassical crescents of townhouses all facing in on a green lawn, then continued on along Brock Street to the elegant curve of the Royal Crescent. Elizabeth stopped. “Oh, this is stunning.” She gazed at the wide, green valley before them. A sweep of green grass, dotted here and there with couples sitting on the verdant carpet, ran down the hill to the trees bordering the River Avon. “Now this would do quite nicely as a place to live.”
“Or even as a place for lesser mortals to stroll.” Richard consulted his annotated map. “It seems to have been the thing to do in Jane’s day. Catherine Morland and Isabelle Thorpe hastened away to the Crescent on a Sunday after divine service when they discovered there was no one of consequence in the Pump Room. But, alas, Mr. Tilney was not here either, although they walked here for half an hour.”
“Oh, I remember,” Elizabeth recalled. “Poor Catherine. Later, Mrs. Allen mentions to Catherine that she met Mr. Tilney and his sister in the Crescent, but that addled lady was much more concerned about discussing the availability of veal at the butcher’s. One of Jane’s lovely comic touches.”
“And Jane wrote to Cassandra that she and her mother walked here on a Sunday after leaving Chapel,” Richard added. Elizabeth looked at the paving stones beneath her feet. Had Jane stood on these very stones in her half boots when she and her mother were invited to tea by Miss Irvine? It made her feel so very close to her literary idol.
Turning their backs on the Crescent and all it evoked, Richard led Elizabeth back downhill. Across the street, they entered the quiet, narrow Gravel Walk bordered by trees with the green spread of a park on one side and a high wall on the other. In spite of the windows of tall buildings of flats overlooking them beyond their gardens, the wall and sheltering trees gave a sense of privacy that was not easy to find in this bustling city.
Elizabeth slipped her arm through Richard’s and slowed her steps. “Wait. This is where Anne and Captain Wentworth walked after she read his wonderful note declaring his steadfast love.” She dug in the floral bag she carried over her shoulder and pulled out a paperback copy of her favorite of Jane’s novels. “Here it is. ‘. . . soon words enough had passed between them to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow.’” She closed the book with a sigh and smiled up at the man beside her.
He took the book from her fingers and turned back a few pages, then read to her from Wentworth’s note to Anne after he overheard her passionate declaration of the steadfastness of a woman’s love. “‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.
“‘I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. . . . You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in R. S.”
It took her a moment to realize what she had just heard. Not F. W. for Frederick Wentworth, but R. S. for Richard Spenser. “Oh, Richard.” She lifted her face to him to receive the very thorough kiss awaiting her. Never mind that she had objected to movie directors adding such things in their modern adaptations, “heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children,” she knew the rightness of the moment.
“Thank you for being the constant one,” she murmured at last, recalling her many refusals to his proposals so many years ago.
“And thank you for not keeping me waiting eight and a half years.”
Arm in arm, they moved on down the path, the gravel crunching under their feet. “It all goes so frighteningly fast. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a single minute.”
They renewed their kiss as they reached the bottom of the walk. It was only a short distance on to Queen Square, not far from their own lodgings. Eyes sparkling, Richard grinned at her. “Um, we could just pop in for a minute.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Whatever would Muriel say to such dereliction of duty?”
“All right then, slave driver. We need to find number 13.”
They found it easily enough on a brass plaque marking a corner house. They stood before the dark blue door under the wide fanlight and Richard consulted his notes. “Jane stayed here with her mother and brother Edward when Edward came to take the waters in 1799. A couple of years later, Jane, house hunting with her mother in Bath, wrote to Cassandra back in Steventon that while Cassandra hoped for a house in Laura Place, thei
r mother was hankering after Queen Square dreadfully, while Jane herself was hoping to be near Sydney Gardens. Apparently she had recovered from her initial shock on being told of the move, because she sounded as though being able to go into the labyrinth every day would delight her. Unless this was another example of Jane’s irony, of course.”
“Labyrinth?”
“Apparently there was an extensive maze in the Sydney Garden in Jane’s day. With a Merlin swing—” He held up his hand before Elizabeth could ask. “A health-giving device invented by a Mr. Merlin. It could be glimpsed above the shrubbery and served as an inducement for people to enter the labyrinth.”
“What a fount of knowledge you are.” Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. “No wonder Jane wanted to live near it. And it seems her opinion carried the day.”
“Yes. The Austens lived in Sydney Place between 1801 and 1804.” Richard consulted his map. “That’s a good trek—across the river and on up a bit. Shall we have lunch first?”
Elizabeth agreed readily, and they walked down Union Street and crossed into the bustling Abbey yard. They chose one of the little tea shops surrounding the plaza and sat at a small table in the sun. Elizabeth chose the prawn Marie Rose sandwich and just sat, smiling at her companion. A busker near the Abbey played “Scarborough Fair” on the violin, and nearer them, a circle of tourists clapped for a young man and woman doing a juggling act with plates, balls, and spangled batons. This was what their second honeymoon was supposed to be like—time just to enjoy each other and their surroundings. No worries.
“There you two are.” Elizabeth jumped at the abrupt, hectoring voice breaking in on her idyll.
Richard came slowly to his feet, not hiding his reluctance very well. “Dr. Greystone, won’t you join us?”
“No, no. Had my lunch, thanks. Just thought I should tell you. The police are looking for you.”
A Jane Austen Encounter Page 5