Read Online The Case of the Missing Bronte by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page B

sort of tiny script?’
    â€˜No, but as I say, I’m not an expert on holographs, not at all. And of course, there is no guarantee that this was by a writer, in the sense you probably intend. Anybody around at that time could have developed a script like that — particularly someone who could not afford to buy a lot of paper.’
    Fair point, that. It had occurred to Jan and me too, but I made a mental note not to underestimate Timothy Scott-Windlesham. I entered a caveat, though.
    â€˜True enough. But it would be likely to have been a compulsive writer, wouldn’t it?’
    â€˜Not necessarily. Quite ordinary people, writing letters, wrote two pages on one by writing cross-wise — they turned the paper forty-five degrees and just wrote over what they had just written. Florence Nightingale did, I know.’
    â€˜I see. So did you rather pour cold water on the idea?’
    â€˜No, no, no, Superintendent.’ He leaned forward in an agony of goodwill and sincerity. ‘Not at all, dear me no. But what I did do was try not to raise false hopes. Surely you can see that that was only kind? Because it would have been an awful let-down if it had turned out to be written by Amelia Smith, a dressmaker’s apprentice from Halifax, or something.’
    â€˜True. So what did you say?’
    â€˜Well, the obvious thing: that what she needed was an expert, someone with special qualifications in manuscripts. I thought if I told her to take it to Haworth that would rather prejudge the affair. So I suggested she take it along to a librarian, who would know the sort of person to contact. Then there would be no question of anyone trying to confirm a preconceived idea.’
    â€˜I see. You suggested the university library here?’
    â€˜Good God, no. The librarian here’s nothing but a sexy dwarf. He’s only interested in grabbing his girls behind the desk. He wouldn’t know a Brontë manuscript from a ship’s log.’
    â€˜Where did you recommend she go, then?’
    â€˜I don’t think I recommended anywhere, but I think I mentioned Leeds and Halifax. The Brotherton Library at Leeds is a very respectable collection — oodles of Brontë stuff, I believe, so they’d certainly be interested.’
    â€˜I see. And she accepted this advice?’
    Timothy spread out his hands. Women, he seemed to say. Who can be sure with them? ‘So far as I know. She thanked me, and said it seemed a good idea.’
    â€˜And did you talk about this to anyone? Your wife? Any of your colleagues?’
    â€˜I haven’t got a wife. We’re separated. No, I certainly didn’t mention it to any of my colleagues, as you call them.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜For a start, the likelihood was that there was nothing in it: lost manuscripts don’t turn up in trunks every day of the week, and certainly not Brontë juvenilia. I know there’s mountains of it, but still it did seem more likely that this was some schoolgirl’s gushy attempt at fiction from back in the nineteenth century somewhere. Then my dear colleagues would have sniggered like crazy and put it about that I’d thought a Victorian school-miss’strash was the work of a Brontë — there’s no loyalty here, I’m awfully afraid. So you can be quite sure I didn’t say a word to any of them.’
    â€˜Nor anybody else? You didn’t, for example, talk about it over a pint with anyone?’
    â€˜You have the oddest idea, Superintendent, of what one talks about over a pint in Milltown.’ He smirked. ‘It may be all sorts of things, but I assure you it is never literary manuscripts.’
    â€˜I take your point. Did Miss Wing say what she would do with the manuscript if it did turn out to be of interest? Sell it? Give it to a library or museum?’
    â€˜Really, we had hardly come to that stage — that would have been crossing one’s bridges. In any