‘Are you okay?’ he asked, sensing something was not quite right.

‘I’m fine,’ I replied, by now well used to making everything appear normal. ‘What’s the problem?’ I looked across at my clock. It was 3 a.m. I groaned.

‘Another manuscript has been stolen. I just got it over the wire. Same MO as Chuzzlewit. They just walked in and took it. Two guards dead. One by his own gun.’

‘Jane Eyre?’

‘How the dickens did you know that?’

‘Rochester told me.’

‘What—?’

‘Never mind. Haworth House?’

‘An hour ago.’

‘I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.’

Within the hour we were driving north to join the Mi at Rugby. The night was clear and cool, the roads almost deserted. The roof was up and the heating full on, but even so it was draughty as the gale outside tried to find a toehold in the hood. I shuddered to think what it might be like driving the car in winter. By 5 a.m. we would make Rugby and it would be easier from there.

‘I hope I shan’t regret this,’ murmured Bowden. ‘Braxton won’t be terribly happy when he finds out.’

‘Whenever people say: “I hope I won’t regret this”, they do. So if you want me to let you out, I will. Stuff Braxton. Stuff Goliath and stuff Jack Schitt. Some things are more important than rules and regulations. Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time. I would give everything to ensure the novel’s survival.’

Bowden said nothing. Working with me, I suspected, was the first time he had really started to enjoy being in SpecOps. I shifted down a gear to overtake a slow-moving lorry and then accelerated away.

‘How did you know it was Jane Eyre when I rang?’

I thought for a minute. If I couldn’t tell Bowden, I couldn’t tell anyone. I pulled Rochester’s handkerchief out of my pocket.

‘Look at the monogram.’

‘EFR?’

‘It belongs to Edward Fairfax Rochester.’

Bowden looked at me doubtfully.

‘Careful, Thursday. While I fully admit that I might not be the best Bronte scholar, even I know that these people aren’t actually real.’

‘Real or not, I’ve met him several times. I have his coat too.’

‘Wait—I understand about Quaverley’s extraction but what are you saying? That characters can jump spontaneously from the pages of novels?’

‘I heartily agree that something odd is going on; something I can’t possibly explain. The barrier between myself and Rochester has softened. It’s not just him making the jump either; I once entered the book myself when I was a little girl. I arrived at the moment they met. Do you remember it?’

Bowden looked sheepish and stared out of the sidescreen at a passing petrol station.

‘That’s very cheap for unleaded.’

I guessed the reason. ‘You’ve never read it, have you?’

‘Well—‘ he stammered. ‘It’s just that, er—‘

I laughed.

‘Well, well, a LiteraTec who hasn’t read Jane Eyre?

‘Okay, okay, don’t rub it in. I studied Wuthering Heights and Villette instead. I meant to give it my fullest attention but like many things it must have slipped my mind.’

‘I had better run it by you.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ agreed Bowden grumpily.

I told him the story of Jane Eyre over the next hour, starting with the young orphan Jane, her childhood with Mrs Reed and her cousins, her time at Lowood, a frightful charity school run by a cruel and hypocritical evangelist; then the outbreak of typhus and the death of her good friend Helen Burns; after that of how Jane rises to become a model pupil and eventually student teacher under the principal, Miss Temple.

‘Jane leaves Lowood and moves to Thornfield, where she has one charge, Rochester’s ward, Adele.’

‘Ward?’ asked Bowden. ‘What’s that?’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I guess it’s a polite way of saying that she is the product of a previous liaison. If Rochester lived today Adele would be splashed all over the front page of The Toad as a “love child”.’

‘But he did the decent thing?’

‘Oh, yes. Anyhow, Thornfield is a pleasant place to live, if not slightly strange—Jane has the idea that there is something going on that no one is talking about. Rochester returns home after an absence of three months and turns out to be a sullen, dominating personality, but he is impressed by Jane’s fortitude when she saves him from being burned by a mysterious fire in his bedroom. Jane falls in love with Rochester but has to witness his courtship of Blanche Ingram, a sort of nineteenth-century bimbo. Jane leaves to attend to Mrs Reed, who is dying and when she returns, Rochester asks her to marry him; he has realised in her absence that the qualities of Jane’s character far outweigh those of Miss Ingram, despite the difference in their social status.’

‘So far so good.’

‘Don’t count your chickens. A month later the wedding ceremony is interrupted by a lawyer who claims that Rochester is already married and his first wife—Bertha—is still living. He accuses Rochester of bigamy, which is found to be true. The mad Bertha Rochester lives in a room on the upper floor of Thornfield, attended to by the strange Grace Poole. It was she who had attempted to set fire to Rochester in his bed all those months ago. Jane is deeply shocked—as you can imagine—and Rochester tries to excuse his conduct, claiming that his love for her was real. He asks her to go away with him as his mistress, but she refuses. Still in love with him, Jane runs away and finds herself in the home of the Rivers, two sisters and a brother who turn out to be her first cousins.’

‘Isn’t that a bit unlikely?’

‘Shh. Jane’s uncle, who is also their uncle, has just died and leaves her all his money. She divides it among them all and settles down to an independent existence. The brother, St John Rivers, decides to go to India as a missionary and wants Jane to marry him and serve the Church. Jane is quite happy to serve him, but not to marry him. She believes that marriage is a union of love and mutual respect, not something that should be a duty. There is a long battle of wills and finally she agrees to go with him to India as his assistant. It is in India, with Jane building a new life, that the book ends.’

‘And that’s it?’ asked Bowden in surprise.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the ending does sound a bit of an anticlimax. We try to make art perfect because we never manage it in real life and here is Charlotte Bronte concluding her novel—presumably something which has a sense of autobiographical wishful thinking about it—in a manner that reflects her own disappointed love life. If I had been Charlotte I would have made certain that Rochester and Jane were reunited—married, if possible.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ I said, ‘I didn’t write it.’ I paused. ‘You’re right, of course,’ I murmured. ‘It is a crap ending. Why, when all was going so well, does the ending just cop out on the reader? Even the Jane Eyre purists agree that it would have been far better for them to have tied the knot.’

‘How, with Bertha still around?’

‘I don’t know; she could die or something. It is a problem, isn’t it?’

‘How do you know it so well?’ asked Bowden.

‘It’s always been a favourite of mine. I had a copy of it in my jacket pocket when I was shot. It stopped the bullet. Rochester appeared soon after and kept pressure on my arm wound until the medics arrived. He and the book saved my life.’

Bowden looked at his watch.

‘Yorkshire is still many miles away. We shan’t get their until—Hello, what’s this?’

There appeared to be an accident on the carriageway ahead. Two dozen or so cars had stopped in front of us and when nothing moved for a couple of minutes I pulled on to the hard shoulder and drove slowly to the front of the queue. A traffic cop hailed us to stop, looked doubtfully at the bullet holes in the paintwork of my car and then said: ‘Sorry, ma’am. Can’t let you through—‘