The Case of the Missing Bronte

by Robert Barnard

  I suppose you thought, when I said in the last chapter that Jan had never read anything by the Brontës, that this was just a piece of husbandly snide. Actually it is quite true. Jan went to one of those schools built in London in the late ’fifties: plate glass, unlimited equipment, variable teaching and a surfeit of new ideas. In Jan’s school any books they read had to be ‘relevant’ (by implication ‘to the contemporary situation’), and since she was at school in the late ’sixties, you can imagine what that meant. She has read lots of Brecht, novels by David Storey and Sillitoe, and she’s performed in plays by Edward Bond and such like. I have this reactionary notion that one can be educated without any knowledge of the works of Edward Bond, but not without any knowledge of the works of Emily Brontë. Anyway, except for a dreadful film from some years back in which all the characters seemed to be epileptics (an odd idea — it wasn’t even the year of the handicapped), Jan had had no contact with Wuthering Heights. Naturally it bowled her over.

  Poring over the various books from the library, we came quite early to the conclusion that the handwriting on the page we saw most resembled Emily’s — for example, her handwriting in those oddly childish diary fragments she and Anne wrote. Probably Emily had other handwritings too: Charlotte had a flowing script for the fair copies of her novels — quite rightly, because no publisher even then would have consented to read the tiny script she had used for the childhood booklets. Presumably Emily had the same. But this was her private script — for drafts, poems, personal things.

  Then we got down to the biographies. These, especially in the case of Emily and Anne, were really quite odd, as practically nothing is known of them, and the books were exercises in strawless brick-making. Some pretty peculiar bricks they came up with, too. All sorts of things, to change the metaphor, which would not have stood up for a moment in a court of law. The odd thing was, too, that for quite long periods the biographers didn’t really know where Emily and Anne were — at school, governessing, or at Haworth? Though Charlotte conducted regular and frequent exchanges of letters with her friends, she hardly ever mentioned them. No doubt she was too wrapped up in her own adolescent emotional and spiritual crises. Until 1845, when they all gathered at the Parsonage after the debacle of Branwell’s affair with Mrs Robinson, there are great gaps in our knowledge of their lives.

  After that, as the tragedy sped to its conclusion, the biographies were full, and more securely based. But I was immediately struck with one thing. In 1845 the sisters began collecting together their poems, which were published in 1846. In 1846, too, Wuthering Heights was finished, to be published (after frustrating delays) in 1847. But from Spring 1846 to the time she died at the end of 1848, Emily wrote virtually nothing. She wrote a torrid narrative poem, and began revising it. As far as her literary life was concerned there was, according to all the biographers, a two and a half year blank.

  The funny thing was, this didn’t seem to worry those biographers at all. They had constructed in their minds a picture of a moody, lonely, recalcitrant genius — touchy, unapproachable, careless of literary success. You rather wondered that such a creature should ever care to send her work to a publisher in the first place. But, by their account, when the poems failed and Wuthering Heights was misunderstood, she simply withdrew into her shell and wrote no more.

  A lot of this may have been true, of course, though precious little was the evidence they had for it, I must say. I was willing to believe that Emily was a difficult creature; not the sort of girl one would take along to the Annual Police Ball. What I was sceptical about was the ‘careless of literary fame’ line. I’ve known a few authors, mainly in my childhood, and one thing I know about them is that nary a one is careless of literary fame. And another thing I know is that as soon as a novelist has a novel accepted, he sits down and writes another one. It’s a sort of nervous tic. No doubt the facts that the poems sold only four copies, and the publisher of Wuthering Heights, a Mr Newby, turned out to be a crook, were depressing. But how much literature would there be if everyone gave up writing because their publisher was crooked? I refused to believe that during those more than two years, until she fell ill in the autumn of 1848, Emily was for the first time in her adult life idle — idle, that is, in a literary sense.

  ‘I know I’d be scribbling away like mad,’ said Jan.

  ‘You’re hardly the Emily Brontë type,’ I said. ‘But yes — I bet she was too.’

  Two more things struck us very forcibly. The first was that after Charlotte’s death a note was found in Emily’s desk, in an envelope addressed to Ellis Bell (her pseudonym). It was from Newby, her scamp publisher — but it was a perfectly sensible letter, expressing interest in a ‘second work’ which had clearly been mentioned to him, but advising her to take time and care, since second novels were a difficult hurdle. Here was first-rate, police-court evidence of a second novel. But what did the biographers do? Most of them assumed it was a letter to Anne about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and that it had somehow got pushed into the wrong envelope.

  The second thing that struck me was the chaotic state of Brontë manuscripts. Charlotte’s husband, at the end of a long life, and in what one can only take to have been a state of senility, let them fall into the hands of a rogue and a forger. This man, Thomas J. Wise, had played fast and loose with the manuscripts, to increase their value to avid British and American collectors. For example, he had taken them apart and had sewn up little bits of Charlotte’s manuscripts (valuable) with great wadges of Branwell’s manuscripts (not very valuable). Lots of important material had simply disappeared from sight. Only a few years before an American scholar had put together two manuscript fragments widely separated in two learned libraries and had come up with four chapters of what was apparently Charlotte Brontë’s first attempt at a proper novel. Before then, those pieces had been virtually unknown. If Thomas J. Wise’s reputation as a forger was rather discouraging, this story was a real pick-me-up, proving that even today discoveries were still waiting to be made.

  As you can imagine, all this research took most of our spare time, and though Jan had a fair bit of this, having just finished her degree at Newcastle, and being in a state of suspended animation waiting for the results, still Daniel got mildly neglected all the next week. He proved his nice nature by reading a lot, running as wild as a boy can do in the streets of Maida Vale, and fixing a lot of his own food. Jan and I, meanwhile, were mulling over the whole thing incessantly.

  ‘What I can’t believe,’ said Jan, ‘is this notion that when she finished Wuthering Heights, and when it was accepted, she just sat around like a gawbie for well over two years. It’s not as though Haworth offered an infinite variety of other occupations, seeing it was at that time the original back of beyond. As far as I can see she didn’t even go to church. It was Charlotte who taught Sunday school and all that kind of thing. Emily had been writing for fifteen years, and then suddenly she stopped. I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘There was Branwell,’ I said, forcing myself against the grain to fill the position of Devil’s Advocate and damper of Jan’s hopes. ‘She seems to have been the only one to have any time for him.’

  ‘Branwell must have been a trial, but he can hardly have been a full-time occupation. In those months Anne wrote another novel, Charlotte wrote most of Jane Eyre and half of Shirley — and Emily, nothing at all.’

  ‘Well, I agree it’s pretty odd. But it’s a long way from saying that to saying that what Miss Wing has is it. Emily may have destroyed it herself. Charlotte may have, after her death.’

  ‘Well, if so, what’s this?’

  ‘For a start,’ I said, ‘there’s the forger.’

  ‘Forgeries, as you rightly said to Miss Wing, are made to be sold, not to be stored away, to turn up years later among the papers of a family with Brontë connections.’

  ‘What about Miss Wing as a forger herself?’

  ‘Honestly, did she look like one?’

  ‘Not in the least.
But then, I’ve known one or two forgers, and I’d be hard put to it to generalize about the type. Well, then, if it’s not a forgery, perhaps it’s an early novel by Charlotte. All the children’s handwriting was very similar, that’s why Thomas J. Wise got away with his dirty tricks with the manuscripts. Or it might be by Branwell. A novel by Branwell is a definite possibility. That would explain, too, how it could have lain there so long: it wouldn’t have anything like as great a commercial value.’

  ‘Branwell could never have written a novel,’ objected Jan. ‘He wasn’t a stayer.’

  ‘You only say that because the biographers say it. He stayed with the Robinsons at Blake Hall twice as long as Charlotte ever stayed at any of her governess jobs. If Mrs Robinson had been a bolter, perhaps Branwell would have been a stayer. After all, if Charlotte had died in 1845, exactly the same would have been said about her. She’d never stuck to anything.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Jan dubiously. ‘It was always perfectly clear that there was more to Charlotte than there was to Branwell. He was the despair of the family, right from the time he grew up. And I can’t see the love of Mrs Robinson making much difference to him. We don’t even know that he ever had an affair with her. Daphne du Maurier thinks it was with one of the daughters.’

  ‘I expect someone, somewhere, is writing a book to prove it was with the Robinson boy who was his pupil. Then we’ll have covered all the possibilities.’

  ‘Any more bright ideas about what the manuscript could be?’

  ‘Let’s see . . . I say, what if it turned out to be one of those awful modern sequels — Return to Wuthering Heights, or something? There was a rash of them a few years ago. All they lacked was genius.’

  ‘Written in Emily’s tiny hand to give verisimilitude, I suppose? Come off it, Perry, you can do better than that. You know, this is unbearable. How do you think we’ll hear? Is it the sort of thing that would get into the papers?’

  ‘Oh, sure. If it were authenticated. But it’ll take years before anyone gets to that point.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Perry, I can’t wait years. I’m dying of the suspense as it is. Why can’t we go back there and ask her? Or even give her a ring?’

  ‘Really, Jan, you don’t imagine I’d drive all that way on the off-chance . . .’ But actually, when it came to the point, I thought I might be forced to that. So I continued rather feebly: ‘Anyway, we obviously ought to try to ring up first. At the moment we don’t even know she’s gone to anyone at the University of Milltown.’

  ‘Couldn’t we try ringing her, Perry? After all, she did rather drag us into the whole thing, didn’t she, so she can’t blame us for wanting to follow it up.’

  ‘We’ll have to give her a bit longer, Jan. I mean, even if she has contacted an expert, she won’t have got a snap judgment. You know what that sort is like. It could be months before they even give a highly tentative and preliminary judgment, hedged around with ifs and buts and “to the best of our knowledges”.’

  As luck would have it, it was at that moment that the telephone rang in the hall.

  ‘Perry Trethowan,’ I said.

  ‘Perry Trethowan, you’re a perpetual surprise to me,’ said the voice of Assistant Commissioner Joe Grierley, my boss. ‘I never knew you had Yorkshire connections, Perry.’

  ‘Northumberland,’ I corrected him. ‘You know that perfectly well.’

  ‘Yorkshire,’ insisted Joe. ‘Here are people asking about you from Yorkshire. When were you there last?’

  ‘We passed through last week, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Exactly. Leaving behind indelible memories, apparently. Why do people remember you, Perry? Is it your size?’

  ‘It’s because my father got done in in totally ridiculous circumstances and you insisted on sending me to help clear it up. What is all this, Joe? I’m off until six o’clock.’

  ‘Did you meet an elderly lady in a pub? In a village called Hutton-le-Dales?’

  ‘I did. We did. Jan and Daniel were with me.’

  ‘So I gather. Will you speak to this bloke from Yorkshire? Something’s come up, and he thought you could help.’

  Naturally I assented, very much less grudgingly than would normally be the case during my off-duty time. We were not, obviously, to lose contact with Miss Edith Wing. I waited, while complicated things were done on the switchboard at Scotland Yard, and eventually I heard a gentle, tired Yorkshire voice.

  ‘Superintendent Trethowan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you off-duty. Has the Assistant Commissioner given you some idea what it’s about?’

  ‘Not really. But yes, my wife and I did talk to an old lady in a pub in Hutton-le-Dales. Edith Wing the name was.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. I’m afraid you were recognized. Now, what did you talk about?’

  ‘Oh, mainly about a manuscript she’d discovered among papers she’d inherited.’

  ‘Do you know what this manuscript was?’

  ‘No, at least, not anything definite. But the handwriting was very individual, and very tiny, and it did occur to us that it could be the manuscript of a Brontë novel. Perhaps an early version of one of the known ones, or else an unpublished one.’

  ‘Is that really possible?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ve been looking into it. There does seem to be a chance — a long shot. Look, what is all this?’

  ‘You see, Superintendent, you’ve got a reputation of being — well, a bit more at home with these things than the rest of us. I tell you frankly, I’m all at sea. And the fact is, we’re very short-staffed at the moment. The PM is visiting areas of high unemployment, and we’re drafting in reinforcements everywhere she goes, as you’ve probably seen — ’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘but what has happened?’

  ‘Miss Wing was attacked, I’m afraid, two nights ago, in her cottage. So far as we can see she must have surprised an intruder. It was a pretty savage attack about the head. Up to now she hasn’t regained consciousness. The doctors aren’t saying much, but there’s a question of brain damage, even if she does come round.’

  ‘Poor old thing. And the manuscript?’

  ‘There’s any amount of papers. Letters. Documents. But nothing that looks anything like a novel. Nothing I remember in little tiny handwriting either.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You obviously know so much more about it than anyone here. That’s why we’d like you to come up.’

  ‘You’d have to talk to the Yard about that.’

  ‘In point of fact, I have done, Mr Trethowan. And the Assistant Commissioner was perfectly willing to second you up here, fairly unofficially, for a week or two, to head the investigation. We’d do all the basic stuff, of course — most of it’s done already, in fact. What we need is someone with a good idea of what he might be looking for, and who might be interested in it. You’ve seen it. You’re up on the background. The question is, are you agreeable?’

  Was I agreeable!

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. Yes.’

  CHAPTER 3

  PASTORAL VISIT

  Jan, it need hardly be said, was desperate to accompany me. It’s funny: she has no desire to be at my right hand in cases of insurance frauds, or bankruptcy proceedings, or driving offences. Nor has she shown any desire to be in on shoot-outs with bank raiders, or on the long siege I once had round a block of flats where the IRA were holding hostages. But let there be a bit of glamour, or spice, or merely something different about a case, and she gets her bags packed at once. Luckily, as she very well knew, regulations are quite, nay crystal, clear on this point, and I could, without acrimony, knock the idea bang on the head, once and for all.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch by phone,’ I said generously.

  ‘I think,’ Jan said, stretching meditatively, ‘that the time has come to pay another visit to Aunt Sybilla and Aunt Kate.’

  ‘Don’t be barmy, woman. We’ve only been back home a week.’

  ‘Aunt Kate
said, as we were leaving, that we could never come too often for her.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Because I repressed with difficulty the impulse to say that we could never come too seldom for me.’

  ‘You are a swine, Perry. If Daniel and I go up there it will be an immense saving in phone bills for you. And you could drop by at the weekend. Spend the odd night.’

  I raised my eyebrows and said no more, trusting that Jan would not have the gall to ring Harpenden and suggest it. I just threw a few basic clothes into a travelling bag, and took a taxi to King’s Cross to wait for the next train to Milltown. It was a pleasant trip up, marred only by the dreadful meal in the restaurant car (three items on the menu, two of them off — I really don’t know how they have the hide . . .). I was met at the station and driven to police headquarters, where I was filled in by Detective-Inspector Capper, the gentle, rather harassed chap to whom I had talked on the phone.

  ‘This is the picture, as far as we have it,’ he said, his forehead creased, a sigh in his voice that suggested that the visit of the Prime Minister was the final straw that might break the camel’s back of his professional equilibrium. ‘The cottage was broken into. Set well back from the road, no near neighbours, child’s play. All the doors were secure enough, but as usual the windows were easy as winking.’

  ‘Nothing an amateur couldn’t manage?’

  ‘Right. Miss Wing had been down to the one pub in the village, where I gather she went three or four nights a week, just for an hour or so. It was not quite dark when she left there. We presume that when she got back to the cottage she surprised the burglar, intruder, whatever he was, and he hit out — but very savagely.’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ I said. ‘She seemed capable, but not the sort who’d hurt a fly. Anything interesting in her background?’