The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen Read Online Free PDF Page A

arm.
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    I was surprised that there were no repercussions from Jane’s decision to take her lunch with me. Elizabeth came to watch the rehearsal in the afternoon but made no mention of it. I began to wonder if she might actually be pleased that Jane and I had become friends; it would, after all, save her the effort of toleration if Jane’s assessment were correct.
    Edward was not at home that day, but he arrived in time to see the play performed. He came back quite unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, from a trip to a property he owned in Hampshire. Fanny told me about it when I caught her yawning halfway through the morning.
    “It’s all Papa’s fault,” she said. “He came home before dawn and turned me out of bed!”
    “Turned you out of bed?” I frowned. “Why ever would he do that?”
    “I was in Mama’s bed,” she sighed. “She’s been having trouble sleeping and she asked me to keep her company. She didn’t know Papa would be coming back so soon.”
    I said nothing in response, of course, but I thought how selfish Edward was to do such a thing—not just to Fanny, but to his wife also. Was he so unable to control himself? Could he not have found a bed elsewhere in the house and waited just a few more hours?
    Watching Edward that afternoon, as he sat beside Elizabeth, smiling and applauding his daughter’s performance, it was hard to imagine the scene Fanny had described. He was being so affable, so attentive. Then I reminded myself of the side I had seen during the first week of my employment, when he had challenged me about the ideas Fanny should be exposed to. He had not shouted or even raised his voice, but his manner had carried all the menace of a dog about to bite. Clearly he was a man who expected to have his own way in everything.
    To my surprise Jane laughed when Fanny repeated the story to her. I was not sure whether it was out of spite for Elizabeth or a vicarious sense of triumph for Edward. Can a sister feel that way about her brother’s conjugal behavior? As an only child, I can never know. But I thought it a strange reaction.
    A few days after the performance of the play Fanny came into the schoolroom with a tiny lace-trimmed cap in her hand. “It’s for Anna’s new baby sister,” she said. “Her name is Caroline and she was born yesterday morning at five-and-twenty to six. Mama wants me to embroider a C and an A on the front so it looks as if we made it especially. I don’t want to do it, but she says I must.”
    When I asked her why not, she said: “Because Anna must take it back with her and I don’t want her to go.”
    This I could understand. The girls had become very thick in the weeks since Anna’s arrival and there would be no one of Fanny’s own age for her to play with when her cousin left.
    “She hates going home,” Fanny went on. “She doesn’t like Aunt Mary. And I don’t blame her. I feel sorry for her, not having a real mother.”
    No one had mentioned the fact that Anna had a stepmother. I considered this intelligence in the light of the conversation I had overheard at the temple. I wondered if this was the person the child hated so much; it was often the way. It might kill her , Fanny had whispered in response to the death wish uttered by her cousin. Yes , I thought, a baby might kill its mother .
    Elizabeth, I well knew, prepared herself for this eventuality every time she was confined. A few days before the birth of her youngest son, Charles, she had given me a letter, all sealed up and addressed to Fanny. “I want you to keep this safe, Sharp,” she’d said. “I would give it to my husband, but it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to deliver it in the event of…” The unspoken words hung in the space between us until she glanced down at her swollen belly and I apprehended just what it was she was asking me to do. It was a death letter, a good-bye. My mother told me she had written something similar to my father the week before I was born.