Disappointingly, Justine Picardie isn't dressed like a fake sheikh when she answers the door to her North London home.

Nor is she a burly, portly type with a rather confrontational manner.

Thanks to the News of the World's chief sting merchant Mazher Mahmood, and Roger Cook, one expects investigative reporters to adopt a certain appearance. Picardie does not.

What she clearly does possess is the sort of tenacious grip that means when she finds a subject interesting, she doesn't easily let it go.

It is a quality which helped her climb the hierarchy of the newspaper profession and has now seen her produce a book which bears the heavy authority of a staggering amount of research.

Picardie's latest novel is Daphne, a book which tells a story within a story within a story. The author spent huge amounts of time digging into the archives to reveal
the history of the Brontës and of Daphne du Maurier.

"I have files and files full of research for the book," admits Picardie, almost sheepish at the hold a story takes over her, but equally enthusiastic when she produces one folder
full of letters.

"You don't want to know just how much is up there."

On graduating from Cambridge, Picardie landed a job on The Sunday Times and a traineeship which saw her spend time in all the newspaper's editorial departments.

Surprisingly, the place where she felt most comfortable was the investigations department.

"It wasn't the intrusive, foot-in-the-door stuff that I was good at, but more the whole thing of getting hold of something and not letting it go. All the researching of a story I seemed to be quite adept at," she says.

It was a quality which came in handy when she was inspired to write the novel.

Daphne, published by Bloomsbury, weaves together three different stories – some based on real-life characters and half-truths – others entirely fictionalised.

The story begins with Daphne du Maurier in 1957 while her husband Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning is in hospital.

On returning home from a hospital visit, du Maurier receives a telephone call revealing that her husband is having an affair.

Resolving to write her way out of her misery, she begins a book based on a passionate interest in Branwell Brontë, the brother of the Brontë sisters, and opens a correspondence with the enigmatic bibliophile
Alex Symington as she researches a biography.

The obsession with Branwell Brontë is based on truth, as is the correspondence with Symington. The resulting book was The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, a biography in which du Maurier sought to bring "some measure of understanding for a figure long maligned, neglected and despised".

Yet du Maurier's words might equally be applied to the man to whom she dedicated her book: "To J Alex Symington, compiler and editor of The Shakespeare Head Brontë, whose life-long interest in Patrick Branwell Brontë stimulated my own, and encouraged me to undertake the present study."

Picardie picks up the story: "Like a lot of girls I had read du Maurier, and read Rebecca when I was 12 when I was also reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights,"
she says.

"I remember being haunted by the ghosts I found in all the books and they stayed with me for a long time.

"But once I went to university, it was made clear that it was not acceptable to read the Brontës, let alone du Maurier – I was supposed to be reading Eliot, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy."

After leaving Cambridge, Picardie gained the confidence in her own tastes and returned to the writers she had loved as a young girl, and indulged her passion with visits to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

It was during one of these visits that she came across the name Symington.

He had worked at the museum as a curator in the 1920s, but in 1930
left under a cloud when he was accused of stealing various manuscripts from
the museum, along with a set of keys for the library.

By the time Daphne du Maurier sought him out, nearly three decades later, the scandal surrounding Symington had been shrouded from view and she had no reason to be suspicious of him, or the origins of his collection of Brontë manuscripts.

She wrote to him in his capacity as an authority on Branwell, asking for his help in her research; and he was flattered by her attention, after spending so many years in obscurity, living in a house on the outskirts of Leeds.

He offered to sell du Maurier various manuscripts from his collection,
including several poems by Branwell.

Shortly after Picardie had begun to pick out the pieces of Symington's story, she was asked by Virago to write an introduction to du Maurier's The King's General, which it was republishing.

"Looking back at some of du Maurier's books in preparation for writing
the introduction, I came across this dedication in
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë to Symington and just became completely obsessed by him," says Picardie.

"I went to the Parsonage and visited Leeds University library. There were files in Haworth on Symington and I desperately needed to see them," says Picardie.

The Brontë Society was not keen to have this former journalist snooping through its files and dredging up an unsavoury period of the Parsonage's history.

"I just kept asking and asking and eventually they said yes," says Picardie.

"I was allowed because I was writing a novel and
not a piece of investigative journalism.

"They let me go up to the museum and spend a couple of afternoons looking through the files."

After all this research, Picardie set about writing her novel. As well as the voices of du Maurier and Symington, she introduces a third character, a modern-day narrator, a student with a passion for du Maurier's fiction who has married an older man.

In echoes of the story of du Maurier's Rebecca, the student's new husband is older than her and seems to still be obsessed with his first wife, and she feels alone in the imposing house the couple share.

"Writing it as a novel also allowed me to introduce another character in the present day, going back to du Maurier and the Brontës.

"I think that helped to reflect my own feelings about du Maurier. I was told that she was not worth reading, but I think that myth is being turned on its head.

"She was a fascinating woman – this glamorous, famous, rich author whose life had the same twists and turns as one of her fictional characters."


Daphne, published by Bloomsbury, £14.99. Justine Picardie will be reading from the novel and discussing the Brontës and Daphne du Maurier with du Maurier's eldest daughter, Lady Tessa Montgomery, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum on Apr 18. Tickets cost £10 and to book call 01535 640185.