Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (Jane Austen Series #1)

by Stephanie Barron

Overview

For everyone who loves Jane Austen...a marvelously entertaining new series that turns the incomparable author into an extraordinary sleuth!

On a visit to the estate of her friend, the young and beautiful Isobel Payne, Countess of Scargrave, Jane bears witness to a tragedy. Isobel's husband—a
gentleman of mature years—is felled by a mysterious and agonizing ailment. The Earl's death seems a cruel blow of fate for the newly married Isobel. Yet the
bereaved widow soon finds that it's only the beginning of her misfortune...as she receives a sinister missive accusing her and the Earl's nephew of adultery—and murder. Desperately afraid that the letter will expose her to the worst sort of scandal, Isobel begs Jane for help. And Jane finds herself embroiled in a perilous investigation that will soon have her following a trail of clues that leads all the way to Newgate Prison and the House of Lords—a
trail that may well place Jane's own person in the gravest jeopardy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553385618
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/20/2008
Series:	Jane Austen Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	63,675
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Barron is the author of eight previous Jane Austen mysteries. She lives in Colorado, where she is at work on the next Jane Austen mystery.

Read an Excerpt

Journal entry, 11 December 1802, written in the small hours

"What do you make of it, Jane?" The Countess of Scargrave asked. Her fingers gripped my elbow painfully.

I gazed at the recumbent form of her husband with dismay. Frederick, Lord Scargrave, was decidedly unwell--so unwell that I had been called to his bedside an hour before dawn, an indiscretion the Earl would never have allowed while possessed of his senses. I pulled the collar of my dressing gown closer about my neck and placed my free hand over the Countess's.

"I believe that your husband is dying, Isobel," I told her.

Her fingers moved convulsively under my own, and then were still. "Dying. Were I to hear it so declared a thousand times, I still should not believe it possible."

I surveyed my friend with silent pity, uncertain how to answer such distress. The transformation wrought upon her husband's agonized countenance was indeed extraordinary--and had required but a few hours to effect. That very evening, the Earl had led his Countess down the dance in Scargrave's ballroom, revelling in the midst of a company come to toast the fortunes of them both. Despite his eight-and-forty years, he shone as a man blessed with second youth, elegant and lively, the very charm of his race crying out from every limb. And tho' he had complained of dyspepsia before, this illness came upon him of a sudden--and with a violence one may hardly credit to an overfondness for claret and pudding.

"Had he taken aught to eat or drink in the past few hours?" I asked.

My friend shook her head. "Only a milk toddy and some sweetmeats the maid brought to him upon retiring. But I do not believe hehad long consumed them before the sickness laid him prostrate."

The stench of the Earl's illness rose from the fouled sheets the maids would not change for fear of paining him further. His breath was caught thick within his throat, and his strength worn down by dizzyness and a violence of puking such as one usually sees under the influence of a purgative. His eyes were rolled back in drowsy oblivion, his skin was pallid, and his features were bloated. It was a trial merely to observe such suffering; to endure it must have been fearsome.

As I watched with Isobel by his bedside, awaiting the doctor summoned in haste from London, the Earl gave forth a great moan, rose up shuddering from his sheets, and clutched his wife's hand. "Blackguards!" his shattered voice cried. "They would take me from within!" Then he fell back insensible upon his bed, and spoke no more.

Isobel was all efficiency; a compress she had in a moment, and ministered to her troubled lord, and the violence of feeling that had animated his poor body but an instant before, troubled him not again.

I am no stranger to death--I have sat watch over too many unlovely ends by the side of my clergyman father, who believes the company of a woman necessary to sustain him in the most mortal hours of his ministry--but this was a sort of dying I had never witnessed.

A chill draught wafted through the chamber door from the great hall below. I turned my head swiftly, in hope of the doctor, and saw only Marguerite, Isobel's maid.

"Milady," the Creole girl whispered, her eyes stealing from her mistress's face to the more dreadful one of the Earl, "the doctor is come." Her countenance was pale and frightened, and as I watched, she made the Papist sign of the cross hurriedly at her brow, and ducked back through the doorway.

I cannot find it in me to scold the maid for such foolishness. She is a simple girl from Isobel's native Barbadoes, who accompanied her mistress upon Isobel's removal to England two years ago. Marguerite has sorely missed her sleep tonight--it was she who fetched me hastily before dawn to the Countess's side. But even I, a child of cold-blooded England less susceptible to horrified fancy, must confess to sleeplessness these several hours past. For the Earl has uttered such moans and cries that none may shut out his agony, and all within Scargrave's walls are robbed of peace this night.

"Lady Scargrave," the physician said, breaking into my thoughts. He clicked his heels together and bowed in Isobel's direction. A young man, with all his urgency upon his face.

"Dr. Pettigrew," the Countess replied faintly, her hand going to her throat, "thank God you are come."

How Isobel could bear it! Married but three months, and to lose a husband one has but lately acquired would seem the cruellest blow of Fate. Yet still she stood, composed and upright, and waited with the terrible fortitude of women for the result of so much misery.

Dr. Pettigrew glanced at me and nodded, brushing the snow from his greatcoat and handing it to Marguerite, who bobbed a frightened curtsey and ducked out of the chamber. As the physician hastened to the Earl's bedside, I strove to read his thoughts; but his eyes were hidden behind spectacles, and his mouth held firmly in a line, and I could divine nothing from his youthful countenance. He reached for the Earl's wrist, and poor Lord Scargrave moaned and tossed upon his pillow.

"Leave us now, my dear Jane," Isobel said, her hand cool upon my cheek; "I will come to you when I may."


1. A brief explanation of English titles and modes of address may be helpful to American readers, who lack Jane's easy familiarity with both. Isobel Collins married Frederick Payne, the Earl of Scargrave, and as such became the Countess of Scargrave. She would be addressed as Lady Scargrave, but because she is a commoner by birth, she would never be addressed as Lady Isobel; that would be a courtesy title conferred on the daughter of a peer. The Earl is usually addressed as Lord Scargrave, taking his name from his title, rather than as Lord Payne, his family name, which in this account denotes his heir Fitzroy, Viscount Payne. --Editor's note.

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

The Jane Austen Mysteries by Stephanie Barron place a beloved nineteenth-century author in an unfamiliar role: that of amateur detective. The series follows Austen’s life from the age of 26, in 1802, up to the year of her first novel’s publication in 1811. The questions offered below are intended to spark conversations among interested readers.

1. Jane Austen was born in 1775, on the eve of England’s war with the American colonies, and died in 1817, two years after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Her life was in many ways defined by warfare. How might this have shaped Austen’s attitudes toward men? Toward women’s traditional roles?

2. In Barron’s novels, Jane Austen is regarded as a gentlewoman–a person of good birth and social standing–who unfortunately has no money. Her desire to write novels is partly motivated by a desire for financial independence and a life beyond the narrow domestic roles accorded to women in her day. Is this struggle different today?

3. The fictional Jane of this mystery series walks a fine line between knowledge of the broader world and its evils–murder, adultery, jealous, scheming, avarice, political treason–and a sharp awareness that a lady of her period was expected to know nothing of any of them. Is Jane a hypocrite? Is she unusual in her knowledge of the world? How does her compromise between experience and the limits of social convention surface in her fiction?

4. Lord Harold Trowbridge holds an immense attraction for Jane in these novels. What does he represent in her life–the desire for power? For deep emotional and physical experience? The desire to save him from himself? Or merely Jane’s yearning to be known for who she truly is? Is Jane more honest with Lord Harold that with others in her life?

5. Jane lavishes affection on her elder sister Cassandra. Is Cassandra worthy of it?

6. Jane’s involvement in the lives of others suggests the possibility that she a) an insufferable busybody; b) has too much time on her hands; or c) is extraordinarily perceptive about human nature–which allows her to map the motivations behind (occasionally criminal) actions. Discuss. Is Jane a perceptive person? Is this evident in her novels as well as her detective adventures?

7. In an era when women were expected to marry and have children, Jane did neither–publishing books instead. Was she a rebel? How did she make the best of a social fate she neither chose nor controlled? Which qualities make it more or less likely that she would enjoy the challenges of amateur detective?

8. Jane’s fictional women usually triumph by the power of their wits and the energy of their actions. Does this reflect Jane’s real life? Is it a hopeful view of existence? Do you think Jane was a content person? An ambitious one? A wise woman or a blind one?

Editorial Reviews

With this series opener, Barron catches the Jane Austen popularity wave with impeccable timing-but that may be the best that can be said of this debut. Purportedly editing Austen manuscripts found in an old Maryland estate, Barron recounts the suspicious death of the elderly Frederick Payne, Earl of Scargrave. Anonymous notes accuse Isobel, Austen's friend and Payne's young bride, and a "grey-hared Lord" of murdering the earl. Intensifying Isobel's misery is Lord Harold Trowbridge, who badgers the widow to sell him her estate in Barbados. Concerned for her friend and for Fitzroy Payne, the new earl who not-so-secretly loves Isobel, Austen undertakes snooping that leads her to a second corpse and leads Isobel and Fitzroy to trial before the House of Lords. As Austen explores a passel of suspects who are heavy-handedly cast as the originals for the characters in her novels, the reader is offered imitation scholarly footnotes. To be truly helpful, Barron might have better explained how Austen hears Big Ben, a bell cast some 40 years after her death. Austen as mystery writer is an appealing idea, but inadequately served here. Author tour. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Any fan of Jane Austen will enjoy her first sleuthing adventure. This charming narrative recounts Jane's visit to the home of her dear friend Isobel, Countess of Scargrave. Isobel and her 48-year-old husband, the earl, host a ball after returning from a three-month honeymoon. In attendance are the earl's three nephews, Isobel's vacuous relatives from Barbados, a greedy lord who wants their island estates, and assorted others. On the night of the ball, the earl dies from an apparent poisoning. As vicious rumors begin to circulate, Jane becomes detective. Stylized prose, delicious wit, authentic period manners, and enlightening footnotes make this book a treasure.

Library Journal

"There's plenty to enjoy in this crime-solving side of Jane....[She] is as worthy a detective as Columbo." —USA Today

"Happily succeeds on all levels: a robust tale of manners and mayhem that faithfully reproduces the Austen style—and engrosses to the finish." —Kirkus Reviews

"Splendid fun!" —Star Tribune, Minneapolis

From the Publisher