First Impressions Page 23

  “But you read the whole book,” said Sophie, who was fourteen. “How can you know more?”

  “The man who wrote this book couldn’t read all the original source material,” said Uncle Bertram.

  “What’s original source material?”

  “Where do you think the author learned so much about his subject?” said her uncle. “He didn’t know the archbishop. So he had to read his letters and his diaries and his sermons.”

  “Can’t you just buy those things at a bookstore?” said Sophie, who had come to believe that all worldly knowledge could be found in any well-stocked secondhand bookshop.

  “Not everything has been published in a book,” said Uncle Bertram. “We’re going to look at the originals—the actual handwritten letters and diaries and sermons.”

  He had taken her to the library at Lambeth Palace, the official home of the archbishop of Canterbury, on the south bank of the Thames in London. They had rung the bell next to a thick wooden door set into a high stone wall. When the door swung open, Sophie felt she was being admitted into a private castle. Traffic and tourists whizzed round them, but only she and her uncle passed into the quiet sanctuary. A librarian who seemed to be old friends with Uncle Bertram led them to a small reading room, where two or three other scholars sat at long wooden tables. Uncle Bertram enlisted Sophie’s help in filling out small slips of paper requesting the materials he wanted, and a few minutes later she was carefully untying strips of cloth that held together dusty stacks of folded letters. She wondered if anyone had looked at them in the past century.

  Sophie couldn’t believe she was allowed to touch a notebook of sermons Tait had given in the 1840s or a series of letters to his wife. How could anyone who knew these things were right here in London not want to hold them, to experience the feeling of life and reality radiating off of them in ways that even a printed book could not provide?

  Sophie came to love original source material. She loved the thrill that came with unfolding a piece of paper that had lain untouched for decades or even centuries and finding out something that other scholars had missed. At Oxford she spent as much time in archives working with unpublished materials as in libraries reading printed books.

  The Oxfordshire History Centre was housed in a former church in Cowley. As Sophie and Winston entered, the high stained glass windows filtered colored light onto the researchers below. Winston gave a low whistle.

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  “Why would I?” he said.

  “For a book collector, you have a lot to learn.”

  Sophie did not know any of the staff who were working that afternoon, and she decided that was just as well. Since she had come here hoping to engage in criminal activity, better that she not be recognized. She pulled out the paper on which she had written the catalog numbers of the Cowley Grammar School archives and began copying them onto request slips. “Each reader can only check out one box at a time,” said Sophie, “so you sign requests for half of them and I’ll sign requests for the other half.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Winston.

  “Anything to do with Richard Mansfield.”

  “I feel like a secret agent,” he whispered in her ear. His hot breath almost made her wish they had gone to her room first, but when the archivist stepped up to the counter to take their request slips, all thoughts but research left her mind.

  A few minutes later they sat side by side, sifting through the first two boxes of papers. Most were folded tightly and tied into packets with narrow strips of cloth. The cloth was almost black with dust on the outside and a clean white on the underside—a sure sign, thought Sophie, that no one had looked at these papers since they had first been bundled up. As the clock ticked slowly overhead, they carefully untied packet after packet, only to discover endless pages of accounts, correspondence with tradesmen, and lists of awards.

  Sophie loved a story, and these papers told one. She found herself tracking the progress of certain students, following the troubles of tradesmen who did subpar work, and being drawn into the drama of hiring a new mathematics master. When Winston proclaimed he had finished his first box, Sophie was barely through the second bundle of at least a dozen.

  “How did you get through so fast?” she asked.

  “Same way I read all my assignments at Rugby—scanned everything and picked out the important words. There’s nothing to do with Mansfield in here, trust me. Shall I go get the next one?”

  “You can help me with mine,” said Sophie. She didn’t like the idea of his getting ahead of her. What if there was something related to Mansfield and Austen? And what if Winston, with his rapid scanning, found it before Sophie could? She realized that not only did she want Austen to be exonerated, but she wanted to be the one to do it. She handed him the most unpromising bundle in her box—a sooty pile of papers with a label tucked under the tie reading “accounts 1825–27.”

  “This is way too late for Mansfield,” said Winston.

  “Still, we’d better check,” said Sophie. “You can’t always trust labels.”

  She increased the pace of her own search, still not keeping up with Winston, but regretfully setting aside any number of dramas.

  As soon as she opened her third box Sophie saw it. She turned her body slightly to shield Winston’s view, but he was already rifling through the papers in his box, and besides, it was unlikely he would notice. Winston didn’t catch subtle details. The cloth strip that tied one of the bundles in this box had several bits of white facing out. Unlike all the other bundles she had examined, this one had recently been untied and retied. She gently untied the cloth and turned over the slip of paper on the top of the bundle. It read: “Richard Mansfield 1758–80.” Fingers trembling, she unfolded the first document. It was a list of students who had been at Cowley in 1758. She went on to the second item.

  The documents appeared to be in chronological order, but Sophie resisted the urge to skip ahead to the end of the stack. A clue could be anywhere, she reasoned. Most of the documents had to do with mundane matters of school life. She was beginning to despair of finding anything, when she reached a small group of papers about an inch thick that had been tied together within the larger batch. Again, the fabric tie showed tell-tale bits of white. The label read: “R.M. papers after death 1796.”

  “Nothing here,” said Winston, closing his box. “I’ll go get my last one. They close in twenty minutes. You’d better get cracking. Anything good in yours?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Sophie, flipping the packet over to prevent him from seeing the label.

  “Maybe Mansfield wrote the thing after all,” he said.

  She felt a surge of anger toward him that dissipated almost as quickly as it had come upon her. She needed him for protection against Smedley, she reminded herself; he was big and strong. And good in bed, she thought. He just wasn’t a scholar or a particularly passionate defender of Jane Austen. Of course, if Mansfield really did write First Impressions, Winston would suddenly be descended from a famous author. Was it possible that he didn’t want to exonerate Jane?

  Sophie pushed these thoughts aside, realizing that she had only a few minutes to examine the final Mansfield bundle in private while Winston waited at the counter for his last box. She quickly untied the strip of cloth and began to scan the documents. The first several were letters from the headmaster who had followed Mansfield, asking for advice. These were arranged in chronological order, and the dates grew gradually further apart, until the correspondence became simple annual updates on the health of the school.

  The last of these letters was dated January 1796. “I was delighted to receive your Little Book of Allegorical Stories,” wrote the headmaster. “There are several of these that I will share with the boys from the pulpit on Sunday mornings, and they will appreciate them all the more knowing they come from a much loved former leader of the
ir flock.” At the bottom of the bundle were two unopened letters, both addressed to Mansfield at Croft Rectory, Yorkshire. Both were still sealed, with a wafer of gum and flour like those she had read about in Jane Austen, Sophie supposed. She glanced up and saw that Winston was still waiting for his box, casually chatting with a young woman behind the counter. She needed something with which to pry open the two letters—letters that neither Richard Mansfield nor anyone else had ever read. Her nails were too short to slip under the paper; her pencil was too thick. Desperate, she reached up and pulled out a hair clip. Thank goodness she had made some effort to look nice for Winston this morning.

  Turning her back to the counter, she slipped the metal edge of the clip under the flap of the first letter and gently popped it open. She unfolded the single sheet of notepaper to discover a letter from a clergyman, asking if there were an open post for a curate at Croft parish. Sophie sighed in disappointment. She picked up the second letter and was just about to open it in the same way when she noticed a tiny cut just above the seal of the flap, as if someone had cut the paper with a razor blade. Whoever had untied this bundle had also cut into this letter. But why open the one and not the other? Willing herself to examine the clues one step at a time, rather than immediately unfolding the letter, Sophie turned the paper over and looked at the address. Eighteenth-century hands were hard to distinguish from one another, especially with a sample of only five words, but it certainly did look familiar.

  Her whole body trembled now as she carefully unfolded the letter. She and Winston were the only researchers left in the room, and she could hear him still chatting with the girl behind the counter. She smoothed out the letter on the table and read:

  Steventon, November 23, 1796

  My Dear Mr. Mansfield,

  I have shared First Impressions only with Cassandra and my niece Anna, to whom I read in my room each afternoon. Anna, I’m afraid, is so excited about the story that she keeps mentioning the names of Eliza Bennet and Mr. Darcy downstairs in the sitting room, and I’m sure the other occupants of the rectory must be filled with curiosity, but so far your little project remains, for the most part, a secret. I look forward to your return.

  Yours very affectionately,

  J. Austen

  Sophie was thrilled and devastated all at once. Here was a previously unknown letter from Jane Austen that firmly established her connection to Richard Mansfield, but again it seemed to imply that Mansfield wrote First Impressions. It wasn’t positive, she told herself, but at the same time she knew it didn’t look good. The three pieces of evidence she now had—the inscribed first edition of A Little Book of Allegorical Stories from St. John’s; the second edition, containing First Impressions; and this letter—together certainly pointed toward Mansfield as the author. But Sophie refused to believe it. She knew that Jane had written First Impressions. She just couldn’t prove it. Not yet. Sophie looked up to see Winston taking delivery of the final box. Almost without thinking, she slipped the letter into the back pocket of her jeans. By the time Winston returned to the table she had retied the Mansfield bundle and was shutting up the box.

  “She gave me the last two,” said Winston. “And she says we can have an extra fifteen minutes.”

  “You work on those,” said Sophie. “I need to pop to the ladies’.”

  “Nothing in that box, then?”

  “Nothing,” said Sophie. After returning the box, she went to the lobby, where she retrieved her handbag from a locker. A minute later she was secure in a stall of the ladies’ loo and had slipped the Jane Austen letter into the St. John’s copy of Allegorical Stories. Theft was getting easier and easier, she reflected.

  Just as she was about to return to the lobby, she heard her phone vibrate from the depths of her bag. Pulling it out, she saw she had two texts from Victoria. The first read: “Managed to get off Thurs. so coming to see you,” and the second, “Booked on the night train, will arrive London early.” The thought that her sister would soon be on her way brought a surge of relief to Sophie. Here, at last, would be someone she could trust completely. She texted back, “In Oxford. Let me know what train and I’ll meet you. Love you!”

  She felt a lightness in her step as she returned to the lobby. Victoria would be able to help—she was always good at forming a plan of action. Jane Austen was not doomed yet. When she reentered the reading room, Winston was bent over one of the boxes, and only one librarian remained behind the counter. Sophie’s mind returned from Victoria’s text to those white flashes of cloth and that tiny cut in the Austen letter. Someone had been here before them. Someone without much experience dealing with eighteenth-century documents had slit the flap of the letter and been the first person to read it since Jane Austen had written it. And someone had been a little careless in retying that bundle. Either that or he didn’t care about covering his tracks.

  “Excuse me,” said Sophie as she approached the counter. “I’m Sophie Collingwood. I work over at the Christ Church Library.” She found that librarians were likely to do favors for one another they wouldn’t necessarily do for other readers—favors that sometimes didn’t strictly conform to the rules. “I’m researching the history of Cowley School and I’d love to share my work with anyone else who’s interested. Can you tell me if anyone has looked at this box in the past few months?” She handed over her copy of the request slip for the box in which she had found the Austen letter.

  The woman hesitated for a moment, glancing over at Winston. “Pretty nice for a research assistant, don’t you think?” said Sophie. The woman blushed and looked down at the request slip.

  “Let me take a look,” she said. She busied herself at her computer and Sophie glanced back at Winston. He was writing something with his pencil on a page he had torn from the notebook that Sophie had not touched all afternoon. Might he have found something else useful? Something that would explain away the implications of the letter?

  “Actually there was another reader who checked out that box,” said the woman, looking up from her monitor. “That’s strange.”

  “Well, it’s a very interesting school,” said Sophie earnestly, “so it’s not too strange.”

  “No,” said the woman, “what’s strange is that the request was from today. It’s got the same time on it as yours. Quarter past two.”

  Sophie felt the cold sweat breaking out on her forehead and her hands began to shake. Smedley had been here. He had been in the room with her. Maybe even across the table from her. Certainly close enough to see what she was checking out. He had been following her. And now he was one step ahead.

  “It looks like he requested all the Cowley files, but this was the first box we delivered to him and then he canceled the request for the others at . . . three o’clock.”

  “What was his name?” asked Sophie, already knowing the answer.

  “I’m not really supposed to tell you that,” said the librarian.

  “It’s all right,” said Sophie. “I won’t tell anybody. I’ll bet it was my old friend from Balliol. We used to talk about grammar school history all the time. What was his name? Smedley or something like that? He won’t mind if you tell me.” The woman stared down at her screen, apparently still uncertain. Sophie leaned over the counter and whispered, “It’s OK, I’m a librarian. It was George Smedley, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the librarian, “I don’t think I’m supposed to give out that information.” Sophie jumped as Winston dropped the final two boxes on the counter. The moment of intimacy was broken.

  “Thanks for letting us finish up, Fiona,” he said. “Don’t have too much fun tonight.” Sophie watched as Winston ran his finger along the back of Fiona’s hand. She could have hit him. Here she was, getting ready to grill Fiona about Smedley, and Winston walks up and starts flirting. And right in front her.

  “Oops,” said Winston, and Sophie thought she caught a hint of a wink as he looked right
at Fiona. “Forgot my jacket.”

  He turned to retrieve his sports coat and Sophie grabbed Fiona by the wrist. “Tell me his name,” she whispered. “It was Smedley, wasn’t it? What did he look like?”

  “I’m afraid we have to close now,” said Fiona, her voice turning cold.

  “Ready to go?” said Winston, slipping an arm around Sophie’s waist. Half of Sophie wanted to lean into that arm, to lose herself in his touch. The other half wanted to push him away, to tell him never mind, she could do this on her own.

  “I need to get my handbag,” she said, shaking off his embrace. “Meet me outside.” She took a minute to survey the contents of her bag in the empty lobby. Three stolen items: two books and a letter, all pointing to Jane Austen as a plagiarist. Maybe she should just quit now. Tell the police about Smedley and his threats and her suspicions, let Winston publish First Impressions, and let Winston . . . do other things. It was the path of least resistance, and Sophie had to admit it was attractive. She might be reviled among Austen fans, but she would still be famous in literary circles. She would have plenty of money for book buying, and she would have Winston in her bed on a regular basis. Unless, of course, he ran off with some flirt like Fiona.

  And what about Eric? How did she really feel about him, and was there any truth to what he had said about Winston? After all, Winston had stood there chatting up that librarian right in front of her. Sophie had never felt more mixed up. All she was sure of was that she wasn’t ready to give up on Eric, she certainly wasn’t ready to give up on Jane Austen, she wasn’t ready to completely trust Winston, and she couldn’t wait for Victoria to show up so she’d have someone to talk to about all this. Until then, she would compromise. She would keep working with Winston to try to prove Jane’s innocence, but she would keep a close eye on him. She certainly wouldn’t show him the letter, just in case he was not what he claimed to be. After all, no one stood to profit more from the revelation of First Impressions than the publishing company that would present the story to the world.