Jane and the Final Mystery

Informationen zum Autor Stephanie Barron Klappentext "March 1817: As winter turns to spring, Jane Austen's health is in slow decline, and threatens to cease progress on her latest manuscript. But when her nephew Edward brings chilling news of a death at his former school, Winchester College, not even her debilitating ailment can keep Jane from seeking out the truth. Arthur Prendergast, a senior pupil at the prestigious all-boys' boarding school, has been found dead in a culvert near the schoolgrounds--and in the pocket of his drenched waistcoat is an incriminating note penned by the young William Heathcote, the son of Jane's dear friend Elizabeth. Winchester College is a world unto itself, with its own language and rites of passage, cruel hazing and dangerous pranks. Can Jane clear William's name before her illness gets the better of her?"--Book jacket. Leseprobe PROLOGUE The Solicitude of Old Friends Monday, 27 January 1817 Chawton Cottage Having endured over one-and-forty years on this earth, and observed much of human existence, I may state with confidence a peculiarity of our condition: one has only to be thinking of a person or event to conjure it immediately to life. A sporting relative mentions the winner of the St. Leger at Doncaster this past September (The Duchess, by Cardinal, out of Miss Nancy), and but a day and a half later one glimpses Mr. Sutherland’s aquatint engraving of the very same animal, displayed at the stationer’s in Alton. The Morning Gazette publishes an intriguing article on Sir Joseph Banks’s eucalypt, a plant of which one has never heard; the following week one’s niece announces she intends to plant a eucalypt at her father’s Kentish estate, if only he may obtain a specimen from the Botanic Gardens at Kew.      By such mysterious workings of the Universe, I had despatched a letter to my dear friend Alethea Bigg this Friday last, only to observe her to pull up in a hired chaise before my very door on the Monday. I need hardly add she had neither received nor read my charming missive. This was tiresome, as I had written purposely to request her receipt for Seville Orange wine, my brother Charles having presented his sisters with a quantity of the fruit at Christmas, and we having quite outrun our powers of invention in consuming them.      Alethea’s sudden appearance, however unlooked-for and delightful, is what we in the Austen household must regard as a sad waste of energy and hot-pressed paper. Naturally, she had come away without her receipt.      “Mrs. Heathcote accompanies her,” Cassandra observed from her position by the dining parlour window, as Alethea and her sister were handed down from the carriage, “and Master William. He does not look very much grown since last we saw him. Indeed, he is positively slight in comparison of our nephews. How old must he be now, Jane?”      “Fifteen at least,” I replied after an instant’s calculation. I was unmoved to learn that William had not grown; Elizabeth Heathcote’s son is forever being apostrophised as delicate. “They will have set out from Streatham on Saturday and stopped in Basingstoke. By this time”—for it was nearly one o’clock—“they will be famished for a nuncheon.”      “Sally,” Cassandra said to our maidservant, who was tidying the remains of a late breakfast from our table, “we have guests. Pray set the kettle to boil, and look out the last of the mince-pies.”      I hastened to the front vestibule and drew back the front door. Alethea Bigg stopped short on the gravel that separated the cottage from the Winchester Road, and extended both arms in greeting. “Jane!”      She was looking handsome, in a warm winter pelisse of cherry wool lined with swan’s-down, and a square-crowned bonnet of gros de Naples in a slightly deeper shade. She had contrived to visit a London milli...

Product details

• Authors: Stephanie Barron
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 03.10.2023
• EAN: 9781641295055
• ISBN: 978-1-64129-505-5
• No. of pages: 312
• Dimensions: 149 mm x 217 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Being A Jane Austen Mystery
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense