Such signs and tokens I revolved for their meaning a while longer — and then quitted the bedchamber in search of my niece Fanny.
I found her in the passage outside the kitchens (the children's favourite haunt), attempting to keep a shuttlecock aloft with the help of young William. A well-feathered shuttlecock shall always have the power to tempt me; I am a proficient of the battledore of old; and so I joined the children straightaway, to their screams of delight. On several occasions we kept it aloft with three strikes of the battledore, and on one memorable instance, for six. And when at last the cock had fallen behind a mountain of bundles left standing in the hall — the work of the invasion packers — and defied retrieval, to William's dismay, we all retired to the kitchen itself, to plead for shortbread and lemon-water.
“Fanny,” I said, after Cook had satisfied our first pangs of thirst, and gone about the business of dressing a guinea hen, “whatever has occurred to unsettle Miss Sharpe?”
She turned upon me a clear green gaze, so much like her mother's. “It must be an affair of the heart, Aunt Jane, I am certain of it.”
“You have read your novels to good effect, Fanny. A romantic young lady will always find trouble to stem from an affair of the heart; but in Miss Sharpe's case, I cannot believe it. She goes nowhere and sees no one — and yet, for much of the past week, she has been decidedly unwell. What can have precipitated her distress?”
“Not me,” William declared stoutly. “I always run when I see her coming.”
“She may go abroad very little,” Fanny said carelessly, “but she has had a letter. I know — I saw it.”
“You saw her correspondence? For shame, Fanny!”
“Not to read,” she protested. “Just to see. Russell brought it to the schoolroom, on a little silver tray, once the post had come.”
“But Miss Sharpe surely has received a letter before. She must have a wide acquaintance — her previous life having been lived in the world of Fashion. There can be nothing extraordinary in this.”
“Oh, Aunt Jane,” Fanny cried irritably, “you are determined to plague and vex me, you troublesome creature! — Do you like that phrase? I learned it by heart, from one of Madame D'Arblay's works.”
“It is admirably put. Madame D'Arblay may always be depended upon for insults in the first style of elegance.”
“But what I would tell you, Aunt, is simply this: Sharpie always receives her letters on Tuesdays. They come from her friends, the Portermans. General Sir Thomas and Lady Porter man are excessively fond of her, you know, and correspond most faithfully. Directly she receives her letters, she sets Eliza and me to learning a piece of verse, and composes an answer while we are bent over our books.”
“I perceive that Miss Sharpe is a creature of method. Perhaps we may hope for the imposition of order upon your sadly muddled life. I fail to see, however, that her method lends itself to your present theory. There is little of the heart written in it.”
“But this letter — the important one — came on Wednesday, Aunt Jane, which you must agree is contrary to all expectation.” Fanny paused to savour her triumph.
“Unless the mails were delayed.”
“But it was not the usual Tuesday letter from the Portermans, because the hand was entirely strange; and I saw that Sharpie caught her breath when she accepted it from Russell.”
“And did she then set you to learning a piece of verse?” I enquired curiously.
“She stuffed the letter hurriedly into her pocket, as tho' she dared not trust herself to peruse its lines,” Fanny confided. “Only consider, Aunt Jane! Sharpie believes her love forever denied — all hope of passion lost — and then, when she had ceased to look for it, the summons comes! He is once more a free man! He longs to press her to his bosom. But she—she cannot determine to go to him. She is tortured with doubt. She reads his letter again and again, rising at midnight to study the words by the light of a flickering taper… tho' they are already written indelibly on her soul…”
“Can not we ask Salkeld to move the boxes?” William broke in plaintively. “I should hate to lose my shuttlecock. Uncle Henry brought it from London, and I am sure that Canterbury has nothing so fine.”
“… and then, at dawn, she burns it in the schoolroom grate!” Fanny declared, with a fine flair for the dramatic.
“She never did!” William cried, “for Daisy never lays a fire in that room in summer.”
“Oh, hush, William.” Fanny dismissed him with a look of scorn; it must be remarkable that she, a girl of twelve, had suffered the proximity of a boy half her age for so long as a morning's exercise. “You have no understanding of narrative structure, you silly boy. The fire at dawn is essential.”
“Yes, dear — but was there a fire?” I could not help asking.
Fanny looked over her shoulder carefully, as tho' to foil an observer. “Miss Sharpe requested Daisy to build one on Thursday morning, altho' the morning was fine. She would insist that the schoolroom was damp, and needed an airing, and that a fire would ward off the danger of a chill. I thought it all nonsense, for you know we did not have any rain until yesterday; but when I returned from my dinner in the nursery, I found her kneeling by the grate, with a bundle of letters in her hands. She was burning them, every one.”
“Wednesday's letter, as well?”
Fanny shrugged eloquently. “I am sure I do not know, Aunt Jane. But it would make a very good story if she had.”
I could not do otherwise than to agree with my niece, and considered of Miss Sharpe's furtive behaviour with a mind grown cold with apprehension. Then I charged Fanny not to plague the governess on the subject of her mysterious correspondence, or to confide the nature of my questions; concern for the young woman's well-being alone had animated my enquiry, and I deemed it best that she be left to nurse her trouble in peace. Fanny and William offered a solemn vow of silence, that I fervently hoped would survive the morning; and so I left them to their shortbread, and the promise of the packing-cases being very soon shifted.
I had burned enough letters myself, to know that they were rarely consumed to satisfaction. Ashes from the schoolroom grate might hold the key to Miss Sharpe's behaviour; and the ashes themselves might yet be located, in some safe corner of the scullery. But could I calmly put in train the ruin of the governess's privacy?
A picture of Anne Sharpe's wretched countenance, as it had appeared this morning in my Yellow Room, decided me in an instant. The governess had said that she was haunted by the murdered Mrs. Grey — and I intended to know the reason why.
“ASHES?” MRS. SALKELD STOOD ARRESTED IN mid-stride, a great ring of keys in one upraised hand. “Whatever should you be wishing for ashes, miss?” Then, recollecting herself, she added swiftly, “—Not that it's the least bit of my business, I'm sure, and you'll forgive the impertinence. You'll be having your reasons, no doubt. I was just that surprised—”
“I'm afraid that in all the bustle of packing, I burned a few papers I should not,” I told her. “I have little hope of any remnant remaining, of course — but while there is the slightest opportunity of retrieval—”