Jane Actually

others were passing the photos back and forth or were hunched over them.
    “If you might put them in the middle of the table?” she asked.
    Ms Johnsson placed them as directed and Jane looked at them closely.
    “How did you get this? I thought Cassandra … yes, I do recognize it.”
    “You do?” Alice asked, the look of surprise on her face evident to everyone in the room. She took several seconds before she said anything further. “Then prove it. What does it say?”
    “I would rather not …”—her accuser saying “Ha!” interrupted her—“… but as you put me on the spot. You must realize I never intended to send it. Once I began, I knew it would be too cruel to Mr Bigg-Wither and would drive a wedge between our families. I am ashamed I ever wrote it, but I kept it as a reminder that the sharpest wits should remained sheathed. I assumed Cassandra had burned it.”
    “Oh Jane, everyone’s done something they’re ashamed of,” Mary said.
    “Precisely,” Melody said. “I hope this satisfies you, Dr Davis.”
    Although she was obviously surprised by the turn of events, Alice rallied.
    “No, I’m not satisfied, not unless she can remember specifically what she said in the letter.”
    “It’s a little much to ask that she remember what she wrote two hundred years ago,” Mr Pembroke objected.
    “She famously recalled
Sanditon
from memory,” Alice countered.
    And then Jane said: “‘Were I to marry you, Mr Bigg-Wither, it would be an abdication of those principles by which I have apparently chosen to live my life. Without consciously intending it, I have decided that marriage without love is a betrayal, and I can assure you our marriage would bring neither of us love. That I might have affection for you is entirely possible and that you might return that affection is also possible, but love is out of the question.’
    “Is that sufficient to convince you that I am the author of that letter? Or must I betray the portions of the letter that … is it sufficient?”
    As Jane had spoken, it was obvious that her accuser recognized those words.
    Alice now stood, slowly.
    “Where are you, Miss Austen? Where are you now?”
    “I stand to the left of my friend, Ms Kramer.”
    Alice turned to the empty spot so indicated, and said, “It is sufficient. I am … I think those are the exact words …”
    “Near enough,” Jane said.
    Alice swallowed, trying to understand the enormity of what she’d just accomplished.
    “I was wrong,” she said quietly.
    “But what about the journals?” Courtney asked in a small voice, and then louder, “She still hasn’t explained that.”
    An exclamation from Stephen drew everyone’s attention. He’d been recording his mentor’s admission and now lowered the camera. “Ha! I knew the name sounded familiar. He’s in the missing and returned inventory from Virtual Chawton.”
    Stephen put down the camera and picked up his tablet. “Give me a second. Thank God I synced it.” He was furiously tapping the screen of the device. “Got it!”
    He put the tablet on the table.
    “Dr Davis had me looking through the inventory, to see what Miss Austen might have used to prove her identity.” His remark elicited an angry look from Mary.
    “It was before we met,” he said in reply to the look. “Anyway, I remembered the name Gorrell-Barmes, the name on the despatch box.” He pointed to one of the photos that displayed the name painted on the lid of one of the boxes.
    “It’s here in the inventory, look.”
    He enlarged the image of the ledger sheet that was displayed on his tablet. A blurry handwritten entry showed: “Returned to Major Gorrell-Barmes, SOE, the ‘journal’: Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
    “The Jane Austen Society in the UK must have owned it at one time. They were formed to save Chawton Cottage and must have found it.”
    “Excuse me, what’s Virtual Chawton?” Mr Pembroke asked. Stephen explained about the project to put everything Chawton related online.
    “Presumably then if they returned the thing to this major …” Mr Pembroke said thoughtfully.
    “You mean it’s a fake?” Cindy Wallace asked.
    Melody answered, “Absolutely. If they didn’t want an ‘original’ Austen manuscript and called it bad rubbish then it’s a sure bet they knew it was a fake.” She turned to Alice. “My God, if you’d just asked your graduate student to look it up … what a monumental waste of time.”
    Alice didn’t reply. She took a