by Amanda Cross
“I want to know all there is to know about her life,” Kate said to Leighton. “It’s as simple as that. Of course, I’m looking for clues as to the relation between Winifred and Stanton, but if we just look for one thing we may miss something else even more important.”
“Great,” Leighton said. “You’re prepared to pay me the highest temp fees for reading Stanton stuff. Do I read at home, or in more official surroundings?”
“If the “stuff” is only available in libraries, you’ll have to read there. Otherwise, read where you will. I think I’ll look at the novels as well—two readings may be more productive than one—but I’ll count on you for summaries of all the biographies, criticism, letters, anything published or unpublished you can find. Most of it will have to come from Charlie.”
“But you don’t want to rely on her summaries.”
“No, and only partly to provide you with honorable labor. We may see something different than Charlie sees . . .”
“Or something Charlie doesn’t want us to see.”
“There is that; the first law of detection is to suspect everyone.”
“Except Watson and Holmes, of course.”
“Of course. While you are reading and summarizing, I shall be following a wholly different line. We’ll compare notes in . . . let’s say a week.”
“How much do you think I can read in a week?”
“A great deal, you’ll find, if you honorably charge only for when you’re actually reading. I’m interested also in any accounts of Oxford in the years when Charlotte Stanton was principal; you know, memoirs from students whom she helped over the wall after hours, or fined for going gownless—that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps I better make an investigative trip to England,” Leighton said.
“First things first,” Kate answered dismissively.
Following instructions, Kate sent in her classified advertisement to the MLA Newsletter as indicated on a copy of that publication she had carried away from her morning at the MLA offices. With it she enclosed a check for three dollars a word; she had no problem with the ten-word minimum. Indeed, her powers of concise composition were stretched to the limit. The ad read:
winifred ashby: Will anyone who met her in recent years at an MLA convention, either at a session concerned with Charlotte Stanton and her works or elsewhere, please get in touch with Professor Kate Fansler.
In the end, Kate gave her university address and telephone number. She hoped, through the use of the three names, Winifred’s, Stanton’s, and her own, to flush out those who might, with a more impersonal ad, be inclined not to bother. No doubt she would receive a certain amount of facetious mail, but the risk was, in her view, worth it. She decided, furthermore, to wait to see if the woman who had given the paper on Charlotte Stanton in Houston in 1980 would get in touch with her. If not, Kate could always take the initiative; meanwhile, she had a neat test of the possible range and provacativeness of her ad.
While she waited for the ad to appear, and for the results, if any, she scheduled a long confabulation with Charlie.
This took place in Charlie and Toby’s living room, while Toby was at work and where Kate, on her way home from a day’s teaching and consulting with students, fortified herself with a martini. Charlie, sipping beer, looked both excited and apprehensive, while Kate felt mainly weary. Perhaps, Kate thought, it’s time I had a leave and wrote a book, or undertook some profound investigation full-time. These were characteristically late afternoon thoughts for Kate, always dissolved by the next morning.
“Lives of leisure always look so attractive from the outside,” Kate said, “but less so from inside, I’ve often noticed. Do you like your unstructured life: no office, no routine unless self-imposed, no people about? I gather, since you left Dar and Dar so precipitously, you longed for leisure. Has it been all you expected?”
“I left precipitously because I didn’t want to work there any longer once Toby and I were definitely committed to one another; he was having trouble telling anyone about us, which I thought, rightly as it turned out, was at least partly because I was in the office. So I simply decamped, and except for Leighton, they forgot all about me. I did realize that if we met later at some office party, people from the firm might recognize me (although office workers are often unrecognizable out of context), but I just wanted to let time pass. So far, it has passed very nicely. And I did still have Toby there to deal with the Sinjin end—the two wills, you know.”
“You didn’t come to Larry’s party for the associates.”
“No, I’m biding my time, but that seemed a good one to miss in any case. Of course, I didn’t know you’d be there. To answer your question, I’ve been so busy worrying about Charlotte Stanton, I haven’t had time to miss having a daily structure in my life. But unless you’re successful as a writer—that is, have some feedback coming in from books you’ve written and expect to write and are writings—I think it could be a mighty lonely life and even a depressing one. One of the advantages of writing a biography, of course, is that one has to beetle off and talk to folks about one’s subject.”
“And Winifred Ashby was one of the folks you beetled off to talk to.”
“Yes. Except, as you’ll recall, Sinjin wanted to find her too. Hence George, and the whole bit you’ve read.”
“Why do you think Toby was uncomfortable about your relationship? And that, let me hasten to add, is not a question I have any business asking, so just tell me to stick to Winifred and mind my own business if you like.”
“He’s quiet, and doesn’t like talking about himself, partly a male hang-up, and partly lack of practice. Also, I’m younger than he is, and Toby’s always scorned men who ran off at sixty with younger women. Then, having grown up with the likes of the Fanslers, he’s class-conscious (though he’d deny it with his dying breath), and senior partners don’t take up with office workers, or at least don’t live with them. There’s probably more, but will that do for starters?”
“That’ll do nicely, thank you. My policy is: if you wonder, ask; but don’t be offended if you don’t get an answer. And pick yourself up if you get knocked to the ground.”
“A good policy, obviously. Meanwhile, back on the farm, has anyone a clue?”
“What you might call one meager clue, which I’d rather not talk about now, if that’s okay by you. What happens to the money if Winifred turns out to be dead?”
“Sinjin’s money? It goes to George.”
“According to your letters, Winifred agreed to split the money with George.”
“Right. When Sinjin wanted to see Winifred and Toby couldn’t find her is when all this began.”
“And you went and applied for a job at the firm; in fact, you went to the firm to see Toby in the first place because of your interest in Charlotte Stanton.”
“Right again. I’d planned for a very long time to write a biography of her. It wasn’t that hard to find out where her will A was made, or to get in touch with Sinjin. After that, tracking Toby down was a natural. Are you suspecting a deep plot?”
“Not in the least; just testing my aging brain. Have you been able to find much written about Stanton, by academics or anyone else?”
“Not a great deal of value, apart from the biographies. With all this new data processing, on-line retrieval, and whatnot, you can get a pretty thorough picture of what’s been done, except for the occasional piece hidden away in some obscure journal. You can also find how often her name’s been mentioned in the major newspapers, and where and when. It’s no wonder most of the academics are into theory these days: research isn’t the attractive rummage act it used to be. Interpretation is more challenging, and quite beyond the range of computers, so far.”
“How do you interpret her life, if you can trust me enough to tell me? I promise not to sneak off and write a book on anything even remotely connected to Charlotte Stan
ton.”
“Part of it’s clear enough: she was a rigorous scholar, a linguist, a philologist even. She maintained the highest standards of everything from social behavior to scholarly endeavors when she was principal, and her mien was certainly severe, to say the least. Yet she wrote these passionate tales of Athens, which the public ate up in great gobbles, all about men loving one another and leading manly honorable lives. There’s a theory that her novels supported her passion for philology, but I don’t buy that for a minute. One writes novels because one wants to, whatever other reasons there may be.”
“And her love life?”
“The question. She was unusual for that time, though not perhaps in that place, in having close women friends. Naturally, there were endless rumors that she was lesbian, but that’s just because she dressed badly, wore her hair unbecomingly, and got fat. There’s a feeling abroad and ever was, I find, that women who have no interest in attracting men are supposed to be lesbian, as though most of my gay women friends weren’t spiffy dressers. Women like Stanton are, half the time, just uninterested in clothes, and, in the course of their professional lives, if they’re intellectuals and academics, they meet and talk with men all the time. Most of the Oxford dons I’ve met, for what it’s worth, are likelier to have a good conversation with the likes of Stanton than with their wives.”
“Winifred’s journal, about Cyril’s mother, certainly suggests that.”
“Exactly. The problem with Stanton, really, is that one can establish plenty of negatives; it’s the positives that keep evading one, such as why did she spend those years rattling around instead of going right to work for her B. Litt? Did she have affairs, and if so, with whom? And, last but best, what relation was Winifred to her, that she should invite her to Oxford for the summers?”
“There’s not a single clue to that?”
“Not so far. One of the ironies is that I thought we might hypnotize Winifred and perhaps pick up a clue or two, but now that’s past praying for, or so it seems. I mean, something might have emerged behind what I think is called a screen memory; it was worth a try. The most galling thing for me, of course, is all the questions I didn’t ask Winifred when I had the chance. How was I to know she’d disappear like that? I could have asked her if she’d heard from Stanton in those years, but I was looking forward to long conferences and many questions. Do you think someone could have kidnapped her who wanted to write a biography of their own? They’ll brainwash her, make her forget her past, and then let her go. Speaking of hypnosis.”
“Too bad Cyril’s mother isn’t living.”
“Both his parents are dead now; the father died before Cyril, and the mother just a few years ago. Talk of dead ends!”
“Could you lend me all of Stanton’s novels, just for a short time?” Kate asked. “I promise to return them promptly, their condition unchanged.”
“Of course. I have all first editions, so it is an act of trust.”
“Which I much appreciate. For some reason, I’m eager to read them as they were originally published; a not quite atrophied scholarly instinct, no doubt.”
Kate carried off seven novels, determined to read them through from beginning to end. It might lead nowhere; it would probably lead nowhere. But if one was a professional student of literature, and a teacher of same, one ought to have some faith in the revelatory powers of a text. Or so, hailing a taxi and clutching her bag of books to her, Kate self-righteously told herself. One needed a profound reason for reading novels at the expense of one’s proper work.
Reading the novels when not, perforce, otherwise engaged, took Kate a week, at the end of which Leighton also had completed her appointed task. That is, she had photocopies of an amazing number of articles, or so it seemed to Kate, most of them newspaper and magazine accounts of a popular and gossipy nature complete with Stanton portrait; a few ponderous, speculative, and analytic; none of them, in Leighton’s opinion, worth a cup of warm spit. Kate, glancing through them, was inclined to agree with her.
“Was there anything at all in what you found,” Kate asked Leighton, “to indicate the basis of her relationship with Winifred? To even suggest that such a relationship existed?”
“Meaning,” Leighton said, settling down in Kate’s living room, “have we any reason, apart from Winifred’s journal, to believe any of that stuff about her childhood in Oxford, her relation to Stanton, the whole bit?”
“You’re being far too smart for Watson,” Kate said. “I’m supposed to raise that question at the very end, having treasured it as the operative clue all along.”
“But have we any reason?” Leighton persisted.
“A great many, unfortunately. Mr. Fothingale checked it all out in England, asked around, spent a good deal of time and money—Charlie’s money, I might point out. There are a number of records of Winifred’s presence in Cyril’s family house, the aunt did have an apartment there, and the aunt did mention Winifred in her will. Sinjin became her literary executor and it was understood that she would pass on part of the royalties to Winifred in her turn. Sinjin was at Oxford with Stanton, and they remained friends, so she must have known all about Winifred. Fothingale met her, not to mention George. And then there are the people on the farm.”
“I don’t doubt that Winifred existed. But suppose her journal was written by someone else and planted.”
“I think you are being somewhat romantic about this investigation, overdoing the Baker Street influence. I doubt if Charlie or anyone else could have forged that journal. Charlie has that dogged manner of the born researcher—the sort who write biographies by collecting all the facts, I mean, not by rearranging them in a new and provocative way.”
“Odd she should have taken up with Toby.”
“Leighton, you’re going to suggest she killed Toby’s wife next.”
“Can you be sure she didn’t, just for argument’s sake?”
“Just for argument’s sake, I can.”
“So you have had your suspicions?”
“Not really. I believe in checking everything out, insofar as that is possible. In my experience, it isn’t possible very far. People don’t go through life leaving records of everything, or writing someone about it in great detail, complete with unconscious motives. Where was I?”
“Getting irritable because I’m suspecting Charlie.”
“Oh, Leighton, do behave. If you’ll remove yourself from the ambience of Baker Street, and return to our living room with your sense of reality intact, you’ll realize that Charlie would have had to engineer a conspiracy of incredible proportions, not to mention vamping Toby, which might not be too hard in one sense, but would not be easy in another. Toby is no fool.”
“Which may be why he wanted you looking into this. The smallest gnawing of doubt, which you would either explain or dispel.”
“There is the question of why both these women should have made wills in the U.S., instead of in London. But they left total records of them in London, and since Winifred was an American it makes a certain amount of sense. And after Winifred, the money goes to George. You’re not going to suggest that Charlie is in cahoots with George, or is this your day for weaving fantasies so why not let them rip?”
“What did you find in the novels?” Leighton asked, ignoring this.
“Not much. A clue here and there, one sensed, but like so many clues, probably belonging to another treasure hunt. She writes of Greece, bringing many of the mythical and historical characters to life, inventing stories for them, characters like Theseus, Plato, Ariadne, Alexander, Euripides. All the protagonists are men; the only women characters of substance are seen negatively, like Ariadne, for example, who is made to become the worst sort of monster of male imagination, gnawing on pieces of human flesh. Yet the men are on the whole idealized, harsh fighters but loving, with intense loyalties to one another.”
“Your impression is that she
was interested only in men?”
“It may be that,” Kate said. “But I get a sense rather that she has despaired of women, that despite all that she and some of her contemporaries proved about women’s capacities, women still insist on centering their lives on trivialities, domestic virtues, and the admiration of men. So in her fictions she gives all the virtues to men, and relishes exiling women to the margins of meaningful life. This is probably all fancy,” Kate added impatiently.
“It certainly doesn’t tell us much about Winifred.”
“No. Except that they shared a tendency to idealize male life. But then, so did Charlotte Brontë. In Shirley Caroline Helstone says, ‘I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be so difficult to find one.’ Why struggle with female characters and love plots, when you can write of everything else if you will only write of men?”
“I see your point, but that hardly proves they were related.”
“Hardly. There’s a scene in one of the books where a young man’s father has gone off to war somewhere, leaving his pregnant young wife in his son’s care with clear instructions: if the baby is a girl, kill it, expose it. If it’s a boy, keep it. The baby is a girl, but the young man takes pity on the young wife and lets her keep it. Shades of Winifred?”
“Surely one didn’t commit infanticide in twentieth-century England.”
“I was speaking metaphorically, nonsensically—oh what does it matter?” Kate said, getting up to pace the room. “I think,” she concluded, “we’d better let the whole thing rest for a while. At least for a few weeks. All we have, really, is an absence. No Winifred. We have no motive, no evidence that she’s more than disappeared, no person whom one could suspect without the wildest of fantasies. Charlie, Ted and Jean, George, Toby—I ask you, who cares enough to kill or kidnap her? Back to word processing, I fear, Leighton.”