Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [0]
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor
“Delightful!”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A light-hearted mystery… The most fun is that ‘Jane Austen’ is in the middle of it, witty and logical, a foil to some of the ladies who primp, faint and swoon.”
—The Denver Post
“Fans of the much darker Anne Perry… should relish this somewhat lighter look at the society of fifty years earlier…. A thoroughly enjoyable tale.”
—Mostly Murder
“Jane is unmistakably here with us through the work of Stephanie Barron—sleuthing, entertaining, and making us want to devour the next Austen adventure as soon as possible!”
— Diane Mott Davidson
“A fascinating ride through the England of the hackney carriage … A definite occasion for pride rather than prejudice!”
—Edward Marston
“Well-conceived, stylishly written, plotted with a nice twist… and brought off with a voice that works both for its time and our own.”
—Booknews from The Poisoned Pen
“Very good faux-Austen writing combined with a delicious puzzle and excellent historical research. Thoroughly entertaining.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News
BY STEPHANIE BARRON
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor:
Being the First Jane Austen Mystery
Jane and the Man of the Cloth:
Being the Second Jane Austen Mystery
Jane and the Wandering Eye:
Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery
Jane and the Genius of the Place:
Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery
Jane and the StiUroom Maid:
Being the Fifth Jane Austen Mystery
Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House:
Being the Sixth Jane Austen Mystery
AND COMING SOON IN HARDCOVER
FROM BANTAM BOOKS
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley:
Being the Seventh Jane Austen Mystery
This book is dedicated with love
to the memory of Cass Sibre,
in whose library, at the age of twelve,
I first discovered Jane Austen.
Editor's foreword
IN THE SPRING OF 1995, I VISITED MY GOOD FRIENDS PAUL and Lucy Westmoreland. The Westmorelands are of old Baltimore stock, tracing their lineage to a founder of the state of Maryland, and their home, Dunready Manor; dates to the Georgian period. The Westmorelands had recently completed the renovation of an outbuilding on the estate, the former overseer's house, an extensive project of rebuilding and restoration.
Rescuing the solid stone foundation proved a formidable task. Used for decades—perhaps even more than a century—as a coal cellar, the enormous rock-lined room had to be emptied of its inky contents before being painstakingly sandblasted and lined with concrete. New support pillars were installed, new doors and stairways, and gradually the aged stone of the house's base assumed its former beauty and charm. But more important was the discovery made in the initial stages of the cellar's renovation. Beneath the hills of coal dust, rats’ bones, discarded timbers, and unidentifiable rags were several boxes of old family records. The Westmorelands placed them in a storage shed on the property and promptly forgot about them in the flurry of installing the house's new kitchen. But when I visited them that spring, we spent a rainy afternoon in the storage shed, carefully leafing through the fragile yellowed papers, and came to the conclusion that a professional curator was the only solution.
For what we found that day was no less than an entire series of manuscripts we believed had been written by Jane Austen, a distant relative of the Westmoreland line. A daughter of Austen's brother James had married a man whose sister married a British Westmoreland—and by this circuitous route the manuscripts had made their way into the Westmoreland family and, eventually, to the branch of that family in the United States. There they were placed for safekeeping in the cellar, where later generations covered them with coal.
The Westmorelands delivered the manuscripts for restoration to a local rare-books curator of their acquaintance and debated donating them to the Johns Hopkins University Library. Other claims—Austen collections at Paul's alma mater, Williams