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In The Attic
I held my breath and pressed the book I was reading to my chest. This was properly spooky. I looked at the clock. A minute past midnight. I looked back at the books and they seemed perfectly normal and harmless once again, no word more luminous than the rest. There was no secret message at all. I should just ignore it, I told myself, figuring my eyes were tired and seeing things that weren’t there.
Intuition, Madame Bowden had called it. Maybe ignoring it had been the problem all along.
I slipped my feet into my sneakers and pulled around me the old cardigan that doubled as a dressing gown. I didn’t want to turn on the hall light upstairs – I knew Madame Bowden was a light sleeper – and as a result I stubbed my toe on the last step to the top floor. I silently cried out in pain and at being gullible enough to believe the books were telling me something.
But was it gullible? I was wearing a tattoo on my back, half of which I didn’t put there.
I came to a small door at the highest point of the building and had to crouch down. I pushed and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. I searched fruitlessly at the top of the architrave for a key, finding only dust. It was pointless. There was nothing I could do in the dark. I made my way a little more carefully down the stairs and as I trod softly past her bedroom door, the lady of the house called out.
‘Is that you, Martha?’
‘Yes, just …’ Shit. What could I say? ‘There’s a spider in my toilet so I had to use the one up here. Sorry.’
I waited for a reply, but after a few seconds I kept on going. Just before I reached the ground floor, it came.
‘You’re a terrible liar, Martha!’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
HENRY
‘Are you still there? Mr Field?’
I put the pillow over my head and shouted some obscenities into it before returning to the phone call.
‘I just need a bit more time, that’s all. You got the initial draft, right?’
‘Yes, yes, indeed, and it’s a very promising premise but the problem is—’ Derrick, the head of department, was a decent bloke and he had tried to break it to me gently. The problem was I couldn’t accept what he was telling me. ‘The problem is that you’ve produced absolutely nothing to back it up, Henry.’
He was right. I knew he was right. An old letter discussing the possibility of a second Bront? novel was just hearsay. I had no real hard evidence.
‘I’m sorry, Henry, but they’ve pulled your funding.’
‘What?’
‘Look, I tried to fight your corner, but this isn’t the first wild goose chase you’ve been on, is it?’
Oh good, a healthy dose of humiliation to boot. I thanked him for calling and delivering the bad news himself, rather than in a letter. Then I shouted into the pillow some more.
I’d spent years chasing down leads, trying to find that one missing manuscript that would make my name. Yes, I had attributed short stories or essays written under pseudonyms to their rightful authors, uncovered interesting letters between significant players in the literary world and handled countless texts discovered by rare book specialists, but, as yet, I still had not achieved that one big discovery. This was my chance, I could feel it. I’d let myself become completely distracted by my emotions and this was the result. Martha had made her feelings on the subject perfectly clear and if I was to salvage what was left of my career, I was going to have to throw myself into this search one hundred per cent.
I took out my laptop and propped myself up in bed. Trance music always helped me to focus; something about the repetitive tones and beats made me feel like I was moving even when I was sitting still. I was going to get to the bottom of this mystery, one way or another. I had already contacted Rosenbach’s estate for confirmation that the letter was not a forgery. They had employed a handwriting specialist and fobbed me off with delays. Either way, if he had obtained the manuscript, surely the whole world would know about it by now. No, I had to get back to Opaline and find out what happened to her and why she claimed to possess Emily Bront?’s lost manuscript.
I heard a tap on the door and assumed that if I kept quiet enough, Nora would presume I had gone out.
‘I can smell the drink from here,’ she said.
I got up to open the door and saw her standing there with a tray carrying a steaming cup of tea and a toasted bacon sandwich.
‘You truly are a remarkable woman.’ I took the tray from her and brought it inside.
‘What in God’s name happened to your face?’
‘Oh that, yes.’ I’d almost forgotten, what with having my reputation broken and my heart smashed to pieces.
‘Are … are you okay, Henry?’
‘Never better.’
‘It’s only, I’m worried about you.’
It really had come to something when a stranger had fears for your sanity. I had to get a grip. Fast. I assured her I’d be right as rain and, after tucking into the food, I returned to my laptop and began researching everything I could about the Carlisle family. The father was a civil servant who had married a wealthy heiress. Both children attended fine schools and there was ample information on Lyndon’s career in the army. As before, all records of Opaline seemed to just stop, except for a small newspaper announcement of the wedding of Jane Burridge to Lord Findley. Opaline Carlisle was named as the maid of honour. As much as it pained me to think of Martha at all, I remembered what she said about getting to know Opaline by the women in her life. Surely they must have been friends.
I took a large mouthful of cold tea and turned up the volume of the music before deep-diving into the life and times of Lady Jane. This was my happy place: researching people who were long-dead and forgotten by the world at large, as though the very act of my shining a light on them would somehow bring them back to life for a fleeting moment. That’s what had really inspired me to enter the world of rare books in the first place – uncovering the amazing lives and stories of the people who had gone before us; people who cared every bit as much about the day-to-day trivialities of life as we do; people living through some of the most amazing times whilst being wholly unaware of the significance. Something about piecing all of these things together calmed my mind. Maybe it was a comfort to know that my life was just a page in the great history book of human endeavour. It relieved some of the pressure to be someone or something of importance. That feeling would last until I saw one of my peers being awarded some bursary or other, or another who wrote a bestselling tome on the discoveries of some obscure collectors from the past. I was cursed with that most enduring of human desires – to make my mark.
After hours of trawling through births, deaths, charity events and social engagements, I found a letter to the editor of an Irish newspaper dated 1930.
Dear Sir,
I am writing out of a sense of desperation, as my entreaties to all and sundry on this issue have gone ignored. I wish to draw your attention to the deplorable state of the country’s asylums. Women who are as sound of mind as you or I are being involuntarily committed to these institutions without proper examination and being kept in the most horrendous conditions that are far below the standards of common human decency. My dear friend is being held against her will in such a place in the province of Connacht and despite letters to the government, I have been prevented from having her examined by my own independent physician. We need a root and branch investigation into these establishments as a matter of urgency.