‘I have set ideas on the way to educate the girls here and one of those is that they should learn French. A pamphlet has recently been circulated by an author or authors unknown, although it is not hard to assume its origination, which suggests, given we are at war with Napoleon, this is unpatriotic and should be stopped immediately. It is this pamphlet which those outside have responded to with their protest. They call me a traitor. I am a patriot, Mr Swann, but first and foremost I am the guardian of my girls’ education and one day this war will end and if the girls have not learnt French, their lives will be the poorer for it. I would be doing a disservice to their parents, who have entrusted their daughters’ futures in my hands, if I did anything less. French is, after all, the language of Fénelon, Voltaire and Rousseau.’
‘I wholeheartedly agree with you, Miss Jennings, although I am not familiar with the first of those you mentioned.’
‘Fénelon? His most famous work is the book Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse, which was published at the end of the seventeenth century. His views on education were ahead of its time and many of his principles I have adopted for my school.’
Swann remained silent for a few moments.
‘Is something wrong, Swann?’ asked Lady Harriet.
‘It is just that I have heard of the book Miss Jennings mentioned, but could not remember its author. But as for the reason I am here,’ said Swann, now addressing Miss Jennings, ‘Lady Harriet has told me there have been two deaths at the school.’
‘Yes, Miss Leigh, the school’s classics teacher and one of the pupils under her tutorage, Miss Grace Templeton, were discovered yesterday afternoon.’
‘Where are their bodies now?’
‘They have been placed in our chapel. Lady Harriet said you might wish to view them before they are taken away.’
Lady Harriet acknowledged Swann’s raised eyebrow as Miss Jennings led them through the maze of corridors that made up the main building of the school and outside into a small courtyard. Across the yard was a small chapel, outside of which sat a girl, sitting on a chair and reading. When she saw them, she stood up.
‘This is Elsa Timmins. She is head girl here at the school. The other girls are in lessons but I asked her to be here as a precaution, as the chapel is used for individual prayers if any of the girls so require it.’
Swann nodded his approval.
Miss Jennings addressed the girl. ‘Elsa, can you enquire of cook if the delivery of lamb has been made yet? With that mob outside, I want to make sure it has arrived safely.’
Elsa curtsied and left.
‘What have the girls been told about the deaths?’ asked Swann as Miss Jennings opened the chapel door.
‘That it was a boating accident, which is what we also intend to tell the local authorities.’
‘They have not yet been informed?’
Miss Jennings looked towards Lady Harriet.
‘We wanted your opinion before we made any announcement,’ said Lady Harriet.
Swann entered the chapel and immediately saw the two bodies laid out on makeshift tables. He moved closer. The teacher was thirty-four, Miss Jennings said, while the girl had turned sixteen the previous year. The latter – Grace – had a beautiful face, Swann observed, with classical features which seemed not to have diminished in death. The older woman, though clearly showing signs of aging, nevertheless retained a youthful exuberance about her person. Swann leaned in to take a better look at a bloodied mark on her forehead.
‘Do you know how this wound happened?’ asked Swann.
‘From all indications,’ replied Miss Jennings ‘it looks like Miss Leigh killed the girl by stabbing her in the heart, but in the struggle Miss Templeton inflicted that wound with a sharp stone. There are no other wounds on either of the bodies. Miss Leigh then killed herself by taking poison. This was found beside her.’
Miss Jennings handed Swann a small bottle, which had been on a shelf next to the bloodied knife and the stone used to inflict the wound to Miss Leigh’s forehead. He took it and held it to his nose. ‘Am I to assume this held the poison?’
‘That is what we believe,’ said Miss Jennings.
Swann finished his examination. ‘I cannot see anything which would disagree with what you have told me, but I would like to see the place where the bodies were found,’ he said.
Ten minutes later, Swann, Miss Jennings and Lady Harriet were in the middle of the lake, being rowed towards the island by Thomas, the school gardener. Miss Jennings informed Swann that it had been Tom, as everyone called him, who had found the bodies on the island. The wooden boat was just about large enough to carry the four of them but it felt as if the boat might capsize; the motion of the oars moving the craft almost as much from side to side as it did forward. However, they reached the island’s small jetty on the far side of the islet, dry and upright.
Tom stepped off the boat and then tied it to a small wooden pillar. Swann followed him onto the jetty and the two men helped the women ashore. Tom requested to stay with the boat, to which Miss Jennings agreed. Swann and the two women made their way to the spot where the bodies had been discovered. It was at the end of one of the many paths and trails that crisscrossed the relatively large island, which was otherwise covered in trees, now starting to bud in the spring air.
They reached the end of the trail and in front of them stood a stone structure. It was about twenty feet high and the same wide, with a pair of Doric columns adorning the entrance.
‘I believe it is a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite,’ said Miss Jennings.
‘It cannot be seen from the house,’ observed Swann.
‘That is correct. For whatever reason the builder designed it that way. The island is completely isolated and can only be reached by the boat on which we just arrived. One could swim across but the edges of the island are too steep to climb out onto and there are many sharp rocks, deliberately placed, just under the surface of the water. The builder certainly took steps to ensure that the island was difficult to access.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Swann. ‘If Miss Leigh had already brought the boat across to the island, how did Tom gain access to it?’
‘He swam across, pulled himself up onto the boat and then stepped onto the jetty and island that way.’
Swann nodded as they went inside the temple. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the change of light but once he became accustomed to it he could see that the interior went back about twice the length of its height and width.
‘Do any of the other teachers or girls come over here?’
‘No, Mr Swann, the island is out of bounds to everyone in the school.’
‘Why do you think Miss Leigh went against your orders and came across?’
‘I assume she wished privacy to carry out her abominable crime, although I still cannot understand why she wanted to kill Grace. On the occasions we discussed the girl’s progress, Miss Leigh spoke of her with great regard.’
‘Do you know any reason why anyone else would want them dead?’
‘No one else was involved; of that I am certain.’
‘Miss Jennings,’ said Swann, ‘if it was that simple, I am sure my services would not have been engaged to investigate. I would suggest that either you or Lady Harriet believe it to be something else or otherwise …’
‘Swann, if I may,’ interrupted Lady Harriet. ‘I asked you here today for your expert judgement in asserting it was as described by Catherine. I am sorry if I misled you to think it was anything else.’
Swann immediately realised Lady Harriet was lying but for the moment remained silent on the matter. Instead he glanced around the temple’s interior and said: ‘If I may, I would like a few minutes to look around on my own.’
Lady Harriet nodded.
‘Catherine and I will be at the jetty, once you have finished.’
‘Thank you, Lady Harriet,’ replied Swann.
As soon as Lady Harriet and Miss Jennings left the
temple, Swann positioned himself in the middle of the room and closed his eyes. He began to imagine the sequence of tragic events, as he had been told them, which had unfolded within it. He could see the two female figures, perhaps sitting or kneeling upon the woven mat that had been used to cover part of the uneven earthen floor. On what pretext had the girl come across to the island with her teacher, knowing it was forbidden. For the moment Swann had to imagine it was through her own free will. It was therefore a harmonious scene, or had at least started that way. Perhaps an argument or a disagreement had taken place and they began to fight. The girl had grabbed one of the stones that lay about the temple and hit out at her teacher, making the cut Swann had observed in the chapel. The teacher then stabbed the girl, killing her instantly. Possibly out of remorse or through the realisation that she would no doubt hang for the crime, she took out the bottle of poison and drank it. There was no suicide note, so he assumed it was not premeditated. Swann opened his eyes and began to apply his ‘system’ to the scene; a method of investigation which relied on a series of ‘givens’ and the ‘assumptions’ deduced through them.
‘I shall begin from here,’ Swann said to himself as he stepped outside.
Given that the island could not be accessed by swimming and the boat Tom rowed them across in was the only one in the grounds, or so he had been told, it had to be assumed that no one else was involved. And yet, despite the difficulties and danger swimming entailed, Tom had done exactly that to enable him to discover the bodies. After searching the grounds for the two missing women and finding the boat missing from its usual mooring, on the house side, he had been ordered across by Miss Jennings on her return, with the rest of the school, from church. He had swum across and then managed to haul himself up into the boat, to get onto the jetty. If someone else other than Tom had swum over though, why had they not returned in the boat?
It was still a possibility that someone else was involved in the deaths, but given that a knife and a bottle of poison had been found near the bodies, the assumption had to be made that, whether or not Miss Leigh had decided to kill the girl before coming across to the island, she was certainly prepared for that eventuality. Given that there was no note, Swann was left to assume it had been a spontaneous act. He went back inside the temple and crouched down to look more closely at the bloodstains on the floor and surrounding rocks. They seemed to be conducive with the sequence of events he imagined had occurred. Only one bloodstain seemed out of place. This was near the back of the temple, upon a large rock. It appeared to Swann to be a bloodied handprint, or at least part of one. From what he could determine from its size, it belonged to the girl. Perhaps she had not died straight away but had staggered to the back of the temple before succumbing to her wound. The bodies had been found together on the mat, according to Tom, but perhaps the teacher had brought the girl back there, before killing herself.
Swann’s attention was now caught by an object near to where the bodies had been found. It lay discarded, in the shadows. As he picked it up he saw it was a small wooden cup. Had the teacher used it to drink the poison? He lifted the cup to his nose and thought he smelt a familiar aroma of almonds. If it had been used for that purpose, she had sweetened its bitterness with red wine. He placed the cup in his pocket, took another look around the interior and then went to go outside. As he passed through the opening, he saw there was an inscription above the doorway. It was in Latin and he recognised it as being from Virgil’s Aeneid. It read Procul, o procul este, profani – ‘Be gone, be gone you who are uninitiated’.
Swann made his way back to the boat, where Lady Harriet, Miss Jennings and Tom were waiting. The return journey across the lake was undertaken in silence. Once back on the other side, Swann requested to see where the teacher and pupil had slept. The girl, Grace, had been in a dormitory with seven other girls, and a quick glance at her possessions revealed nothing. There were a few textbooks, including one by Dr Borzacchini called The Parisian Master or A New and Easy Method for Acquiring a Perfect Knowledge of the French Language in a Short Time, but nothing which struck him as being relevant to her death. He smoothed his hand across the bed and then briefly knelt down and slipped his hand under the mattress. There he felt something. He brought it out. It was a book of poetry by Sappho, a name Swann vaguely remembered from his Classical literature studies during his own schooldays and from a work by his favourite author, John Donne. She was a poetess in ancient Greece who killed herself over a boatman, if he remembered correctly. Swann could recall little about her poetry though. He had no idea if the book was significant, but the fact Grace had chosen to hide it meant Swann swiftly seconded it about his person, before going across the corridor to where Miss Jennings and Lady Harriet waited outside Miss Leigh’s room.
‘Miss Leigh slept across the corridor as she was responsible for the wellbeing of the girls in this dormitory,’ explained Miss Jennings.
The irony of her statement was not lost on Swann. Once in the room, there was again nothing which seemed to him as being significant. Several books on a shelf were duplicated with those from Grace’s possessions, but these were Classical texts and to be expected. Swann spotted a book behind the others. He pushed a couple of volumes aside and pulled it out.
‘Did Miss Leigh cover Sappho in her teaching?’ asked Swann as he held up the book of poetry to show her.
‘No,’ Miss Jennings replied, ‘that was definitely not on the curriculum.’
The rest of the room was an exemplar of neat and tidiness. A stack of papers lay on a small table; these were essays waiting to be marked Swann observed, as he briefly scanned through them. A bed, a wardrobe and a chair completed the room’s furnishing. There was nothing to suggest anything sinister or out of the ordinary. She was there to do a job and for all intents and purposes, up to the point she disobeyed a school rule, murdered a pupil and then killed herself, she seemed the ideal teacher.
They walked down the stairs of the main building and out of the front entrance. It was twelve o’clock and the girls were coming out from their morning lessons. As Lady Harriet said her goodbyes to Miss Jennings, Swann noticed a girl standing at the top of the school steps. She was around the same age as the dead girl and stood watching intently, as if waiting for an opportunity to approach him. But then Elsa, the head girl, came along and appeared to chide her for staring; taking her by the arm and leading her away.
Swann and Lady Harriet got back into her carriage and departed. It had begun to rain heavily, but the protesters were still outside the gates as they left.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Elizabeth Singer was born in the Somerset town of Ilchester, in 1674, the eldest daughter of a dissenting minister. She began writing at the age of twelve and her work, consisting mainly of poetry and novels, is still popular today.’
Mary Gardiner sighed despondently, stood up from her writing table and went across to the bedroom window. Outside her Great Pulteney Street house the sky was a dark grey and rain pattered against the glass panes. The day was as dull as the words she had just read, written in her own handwriting, which began the booklet she was completing for Lady Harriet. It was to be one in a series her aunt was having published, which was to be entitled Incredible Women Authors of Bygone Ages, with each volume concentrating on a particular female writer. Mary had been allocated Elizabeth Singer Rowe; the ‘Rowe’ in her name having been added on marriage. The publication would consist of two parts; the first, a biographical ‘sketch’, as Lady Harriet had called it, detailing the writer’s life, this being what Mary had recently completed, while the second would be a compilation of the subject’s poems or prose pieces.
Mary had compiled the biographical section from numerous books, periodicals and unpublished papers her aunt Harriet had lent her from her own library, located at her residence near Frome, and consisting as it did of seemingly every book printed on the subject of women’s education and equality of rights with men. The collection was housed upon numerous huge bookcases which stoo
d ceiling to floor around the room and among which were long out-of-print works, limited editions, first editions – some as old as two centuries – and stacks upon stacks of unpublished essays, articles, journals and diaries that were the envy of several universities and museums. It seemed every female writer who had anything worthwhile to say about their own sex and their position in life was represented, from Aphra Behn to Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Macaulay to Hannah More.
Mary had read the biography, she had written, for the third time before going to the window and overall was pleased with it; in so much as she felt justice had been done to the life she had to portray in prose. It seemed Elizabeth Singer Rowe had been, at least towards the end of her long life, a pious, religious woman, whose righteousness had subsequently been held up by certain clergy as an exemplary mode of living to be followed. Mary felt, however, that there had also been a more feminine, radical woman underneath this veneer and had tried to balance this in her profile. If there was a problem with the piece though, it was the opening paragraph. Having read it a number of times Mary felt it lacked the impact her subject required, perhaps even demanded. It was competent enough and would no doubt be satisfactory to the majority of readers, but it was not inspirational; so not reflecting the premise behind her aunt’s series. She had been trying to rewrite the opening all morning and had yet to find her own inspiration. The weather did not look inviting, but she was now determined to venture out into it in the hope of gaining a different perspective on her writing.
The need to rewrite the manuscript’s opening had clouded Mary’s morning as completely as the ones in the sky. It was doubly frustrating as she had been really looking forward to the morning, ever since her brother had announced he would not be returning at ten for breakfast. It was not that she found Jack’s company disagreeable; on the contrary, she very much enjoyed his companionship and their stimulating conversations – but when she was in the middle of an artistic endeavour, one which demanded complete concentration, the presence of another person, even if there was no dialogue between them, always lead to distraction. So when Jack announced he would not be returning to the house that morning she had looked ahead to several uninterrupted hours’ work. She could now see though that to continue would be counter-productive and so, from the moment she made her decision to leave the house and walk the short distance to the entrance of her chosen destination – the nearby Sydney Vauxhall pleasure gardens – only twenty-five minutes had passed.
The Circle of Sappho Page 3