The last book and only collection of short stories by Penelope Fitzgerald fittingly showcases her at her wisest, her funniest, her best. Like her novels, these stories are "mordantly funny, morally astute . . . [as] they plumb the endless absurdities of the human heart" (Washington Post Book World). Roaming the globe and the ages, the stories travel from England to France to New Zealand and from today to the seventeenth century and back again. Now featuring an introductory essay by A. S. Byatt and two newly published stories, this Mariner edition of THE MEANS OF ESCAPE "serves as an elegiac gift to dedicated fans of her award-winning novels and a tantalizing introduction for new readers" (Entertainment Weekly). It memorializes a writer guided by a generous but unwavering moral gaze and proves once more "why [Fitzgerald] will endure" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

The Means of Escape St. george's church, Hobart, stands high above Battery Point and the harbor. Inside, it looks strange and must always have done so, although (at the time I'm speaking of) it didn't have the blue-, pink- and yellow-patterned stained glass that you see there now. That was ordered from a German firm in 1875. But St. George's has always had the sarcophagus-shaped windows, which the architect had thought Egyptian and therefore appropriate (St. George is said to have been an Egyptian saint). They give you the curious impression, as you cross the threshold, of entering a tomb. In 1852, before the organ was installed, the church used to face east, and music was provided by a seraphine. The seraphine was built, and indeed invented, by a Mr. Ellard, formerly of Dublin, now a resident of Hobart. He intended it to suggest the angelic choir, although the singing voices at his disposal - the surveyor general, the naval chaplain, the harbormaster and their staffs - were for the most part male. Who was able to play the seraphine? Only, at first, Mr. Ellard's daughter, Mrs. Logan, who seems to have got 20 a year for doing so, the same fee as the clerk and the sexton. When Mrs. Logan began to feel the task was too much for her - the seraphine needs continuous pumping - she instructed Alice Godley, the rector's daughter. Hobart stands "south of no north," between snowy Mount Wellington and the River Derwent, running down over steps and promontories to the harbor's bitterly cold water. You get all the winds that blow. The next stop to the south is the limit of the Antarctic drift ice. When Alice went up to practice the hymns she had to unlock the outer storm door, made of Huon pine, and the inner door, also a storm door, and drag them shut again. The seraphine stood on its own square of Axminster carpet in the transept. Outside (at the time I'm speaking of) it was a bright afternoon, but inside St. George's there was that mixture of light and inky darkness which suggests that from the darkness something may be about to move. It was difficult, for instance, to distinguish whether among the black-painted pews, at some distance away, there was or wasn't some person or object rising above the level of the seats. Alice liked to read mystery stories, when she could get hold of them, and the thought struck her now: The form of a man is advancing from the shadows. If it had been ten years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl, she might have shrieked out, because at that time there were said to be bolters and escaped convicts from Port Arthur on the loose everywhere. The constabulary hadn't been put on to them. Now there were only a few names of runaways, perhaps twenty, posted on the notice boards outside Government House. "I did not know that anyone was in the church," she said. "It is kept locked. I am the organist. Perhaps I can assist you?" A rancid stench, not likely from someone who wanted to be shown round the church, came towards her up the aisle. The shape, too, seemed wrong. But that, she saw, was because the head was hidden in some kind of sack like a butchered animal, or, since it had eye holes, more like a man about to be hanged. "Yes," he said, "you can be of assistance to me." "I think now that I can't be," she said, picking up her music case. "No nearer," she added distinctly. He stood still, but said, "We shall have to get to know one another better." And then, "I am an educated man. You may try me out if you like, in Latin and some Greek. I have come from Port Arthur. I was a poisoner." "I should not have thought you were old enough to be married." "I n