The Circle of Sappho Read Online Free PDF Page B

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