Page 27 of Dear Friend

“For whom?”

“A Miss Julia Harding, sir.” The servant hesitated. “The same as the others.”

Darcy frowned. “Who is Miss Harding?”

“I do not know, sir. Mr. Turner did not know either. He only knew the letters were directed here.”

Darcy held out his hand, and the servant gave him the letter. The direction was written in a clear, elegant hand, without haste or carelessness, and with the ease of someone who had written those same words many times before.

Miss Julia Harding, Willowbrook House near Wells, Somerset

Darcy turned it over. The seal was unbroken.

“Harding...” He searched his memory. “Was that not the name of the former tenant? I believe I saw it in my attorney’s letter when he informed me the family had left.”

“I could not say, sir.”

Darcy regarded him for a moment, then recollected that the man had arrived at Willowbrook scarcely a month before him. There was no reason he should know anything of a family already several months gone.

“And what did you mean by the others?”

“There were sixteen before this one, sir. Mr. Turner had been keeping those which arrived while the house stood empty, and four more have come since we arrived.”

Darcy looked sharply at him. “Seventeen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All addressed to Miss Harding?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And all from the same correspondent?”

“So far as I have noticed, sir. The hand appears the same.”

Darcy looked again at the direction. “Bring me the others, and send for Turner.”

“Yes, sir.”

The servant withdrew, leaving Darcy upon the path with the newest letter still in his hand.

Seventeen letters. Whoever had written them plainly had no notion that Miss Harding was no longer at Willowbrook. Whether supposed recipient was Harding’s daughter, sister, or some other relation, Darcy could not know. But if his memory served him correctly, and Harding had indeed been the former tenant, then the letters almost certainly belonged to his family.

The accumulated correspondence was brought to him a short while later. Darcy carried it into the morning room and arranged the letters upon the table. Some bore the faint marks of having been kept for months, while the more recent ones remained comparatively fresh. They differed in thickness, but every one bore the same hand and the same direction.

Every one was addressed to Julia Harding.

Turner arrived just after luncheon. He was a man somewhere past fifty, plainly dressed and somewhat uneasy at having been summoned by the owner whose property he had been charged with watching. Darcy motioned towards the letters upon the table.

“You received these?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

Turner glanced at the little collection. “The first came the very day I arrived to take charge of the house, sir. I knew nothing of the former tenants, so I asked one of the men working the timberland if he knew where they had gone. He did not, nor could anyone give me a direction for them. I thought it best to put the letter aside until I could learn what ought to be done with it.”

Darcy picked up one of the older letters. “And then more came.”