The Case of the Missing Bronte (3 page)

‘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.'

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?'

‘Not really. For the last thirty years she had been a mistress at Broadlands — private girls' school near Harrogate. Bit snobby, but a thoroughly good school, sensible people in charge.'

‘Clean slate there, naturally?'

‘Oh, of course. She'd have been out on her little pink
ear if not. They're very concerned and shocked, naturally. According to them Miss Wing was totally upright, responsible, common-sensical. Probably was. We've no reason to think otherwise.'

‘That was certainly the impression she made on my wife and me,' I said.

‘Good. Well, she inherited a lot of stuff from a friend and distant relation, who died in January.'

‘Rose Something-or-other.'

‘Rose Carbury. Books, records, personal mementoes — and apparently this mass of papers. I presume she told you something about that, did she? Did she say that this manuscript, if it existed, was part of this inheritance?'

‘Yes, she did. And certainly one page of it existed, because she showed it to us. It looked perfectly authentic — I couldn't go further than that.'

‘Good. It's not very likely she'd take up forging in her twilight years, is it? But it's obviously something we have to keep in mind. Now, the fact is that we know that after she had talked to you, she dropped hints to other people. Nothing much, but she certainly did talk about the thing — in the pub, and so on. Silly woman.'

‘As it turned out,' I conceded. ‘And I certainly warned her about keeping something potentially valuable in her cottage. But she could hardly have been expecting something like this to happen — nobody would. And she wouldn't, I suspect, have realized its value herself. When she gave these hints, did she say what she thought it might be?'

‘She may have. So far all I've heard is that she said she “had reason to think she might have inherited a
quite
valuable manuscript” with her friend's things.'

‘Hmmm. Quite vague. On that basis they'd hardly know what to look for. Do you know if she got around to consulting an expert?'

‘We haven't got as far as that. That'll be for you. The
cottage is all yours. The boys have been over it, of course. You can see their report as soon as you like, but there's precious little in it. The only fingerprints are Miss Wing's own, apart from some old ones on the inherited stuff that are pretty clearly the dead relative's. The window, as I said, was such a piece of cake that there's little to suggest whether it was an amateur or a professional job: kids learn that sort of thing in school these days.'

‘And was the manuscript the only thing taken?'

‘With Miss Wing in a coma it's difficult to say. We've had a friend in to look round, and as far as she can see nothing has been touched in the rest of the house. But of course she has no idea of what exactly there was in the stuff Miss Wing inherited. The room with those papers in wasn't ransacked, as you will see, but since it was there that she was found, naturally it was there that we concentrated our attention.'

So that was that. I was given a car for the duration, and drove out to Hutton-le-Dales. I found the cottage without any difficulty, because there was a police car outside it. It was, as Miss Wing had said, down a lane from the little main street. I put the car into reverse and drove along to the Dalesman. Bill Martin's wife was fully recovered, and I managed to get a room for the next few days. Then I walked back to the cottage in the early evening sunlight. I introduced myself to the constable on duty — a heavy chap of forty or so, pleasant enough, but not giving the impression he was ever going to make the big time in the Police. I told him I could take over at the cottage for the next day or two, and sent him back to his job of protecting the Prime Minister from hordes of stone-throwing unemployed youth — a job which must involve a delicate balance of lack of sympathy. Then the cottage was mine.