Free Daphne by Justine Picardie Page A

did, from time to time, silently, in his study, it was as Symington. 'Press on, Symington, press on,' he told himself, half-encouraging, half-scolding.
    Beatrice seemed annoyed with him today, as she was yesterday, not only because of the extra housework that she must do in the absence of sufficient servants, along with the other cost-cutting measures imposed by Symington, but perhaps because he avoided discussing with her his letters from Daphne du Maurier; at least, in no more detail than their original, brief conversation, when he told her the novelist had written to him concerning Branwell Brontë. When the second letter arrived from Cornwall this morning, Beatrice looked questioningly at him, having seen the postmark on the envelope, but Symington simply tucked it into his pocket, where it remained until he was in the safety of his locked study.
    She's sharp, this one, thought Mr Symington, re-reading Daphne's letter again; for she appeared to have picked up on something that he took rather longer to realise all those years ago: that the story he sent her was incomplete. But what she might not yet know was that it was never more than a series of bits and pieces, inexpertly fitted together first by Branwell himself, in a futile attempt to form an entire novel, and then reassembled, without much more success, by Symington and Wise, and their colleague (Wise's friend, Symington's enemy) Mr Clement Shorter.
    And she was asking the right questions, too; not only enquiring as to whether she might buy more manuscripts, but also making discreet moves to draw him out on the subject of Shorter. 'Incidentally,' she'd written in her final paragraph, but Symington knew that nothing in her letter was incidental and that Daphne must be very serious indeed to have tracked down Shorter's widow. Not that the woman would give anything away about the mysteries concerning her former husband and the Brontë manuscripts . . . why, the old rogue died in 1926, only a couple of years or so after he had introduced Symington to the great Wise.
    Symington poured himself a large glass of whisky from the bottle he kept hidden from Beatrice in a locked desk drawer, and tried to navigate a way through the facts that he must explain to Daphne. 'The facts, stick to the facts,' he muttered to himself. But it was so hard to know the exact truth of the matter. He wrote down a phrase in his notebook in capital letters. WHERE THE TRUTH LIES. It looked like a title for a book, he thought, and not a bad one at that. 'Press on, Symington,' he repeated to himself, taking a sheet of his headed paper, the address printed in a neat black font. 'Get on with the task in hand.'
    Dear Miss du Maurier
    Thank you for your letter, and the cheque, which arrived today. I must say, it is an unexpected delight to discover that another writer is now taking so close an interest in Branwell after all these years of his neglect. I feel certain that we would have much to discuss, were we to meet.
    You are quite right about the poems amibuted to Emily being by Branwell, and I did get a great protest some thirty years ago when I dared to say so.
    He underlined 'great protest', and paused, uncertain for a moment, trying to remember where and when, exactly, this episode had taken place, and over which poems the arguments raged; but he could not remember the details, they slipped away from him, though the memory still felt raw to him, the recollection of being unjustly attacked and hounded and denounced. He swallowed a little more whisky, and gripped his pen tighter.
    Forgive me if this information is already familiar to you, but perhaps I might provide some background to the Brontë manuscripts in my possession, and those elsewhere, as well? As you may already know, Mr Clement Shorter, like Mr T. J. Wise, was a faithful member of the Brontë Society. Indeed, when the Brontë Museum was opened in Haworth, in the closing years of the last century, its collection consisted largely of