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One runaway heiress, one woman in men’s clothes who is an intelligence agent, two valets – one of whom was recently dressed as a woman – two viscounts, one baron, a second intelligence agent and an out of work curate. It is going to be hard to return to normality after this. Although what normality might be for her now, she had no idea.
‘Those are just notes for the registers,’ Will said when he sat down with a plate of bacon and mushrooms and saw what the Hoggets were checking.
‘So far they are,’ Hogget agreed. ‘The paper is stained and the ink faded with age. If there is anything covert here then it is very old – thirty or more years, I’d say, which tallies with the dates of the events listed. Matthew, infant son of John Fulgate, thatcher, and Maria his wife buried twenty third of March 1785,’ he read and flipped the page over.
Theo pushed his empty plate away, poured some more coffee and looked around the table. ‘Now we know that we can eliminate the Hoggets from our enquiries – ’
‘Good of you,’ Charlotte said without looking up.
‘You must admit, you did seem suspicious. Anyway, who does that leave? It has to be someone who is more or less permanently hereabouts, which rules out the various ships’ captains. According to you, Harris vouches for most of the other inn and beer house keepers and the shopkeepers and merchants. It doesn’t mean it isn’t someone working for them, of course. But the most likely suspects are the Swinburns, the Rector and the Jenners.’
‘Don’t forget Mrs Gilpin.’ Jared speared another rasher of bacon. ‘In horrid novels the least likely person is often the villain in disguise.’
‘I refuse to believe it of her,’ Will protested, looking distressed.
‘He is teasing,’ Flynn said. ‘So, let’s consider them. The Rector. He is ambitious we believe, but ambition needs money. He has been the incumbent here since 1805 and visited often before then. His wife is older than he is and seems a very firm and demanding lady – who incidentally, may, or may not, be sleeping with her groom. She may also be putting pressure on the Rector to succeed and he is taking a short cut.’
‘How does money help with a church preferment?’ Laura asked, puzzled.
‘It would enable him to go to London, be seen in all the right places, secure a patron who, if you’ll excuse me, Manners, has more influence and more profitable livings to offer,’ Jared said.
‘Even so, treason…’ Laura murmured.
‘I know. So, the Swinburns. They need money, it seems. Sir Walter cannot be sure his embezzling of Laura’s funds will go unnoticed for ever, especially if he cannot force her to marry one of his sons. He needs to be able to make that good if he is challenged. Then Giles is a continuing expense, of course.’
‘And my aunt is always pushing him to spend more on clothes, on the house, on a new carriage and so forth,’ Laura added. ‘She would certainly love to spend the Season in London every year.’
‘Then we have the Jenners. Two daughters to launch successfully.’
‘Half the squires in England have that many daughters,’ Perry protested. ‘Their fathers don’t turn to murder and treason to fund their come-outs.’
‘We don’t know very much about them really,’ Laura said. ‘I always assumed they were exactly how they appeared and Squire Jenner is not the most intelligent of men. Would he be able to carry off this for so long?’
‘I am increasingly inclined to think Sir Walter and Giles Swinburn are behind it,’ Hogget said. ‘They have a propensity for violence, we already know they will commit embezzlement and plan various unpleasant stratagems to get what they want. They are not cold, calm plotters, but that does not mean they are incapable of carrying this out.’
‘The only problem is, no-one appears to be rolling in money,’ Theo said slowly. ‘You’d have thought – ’
‘Ah ha!’ Charlotte sat up straight, pushed aside her plate and fanned out pages of the notes. ‘Look at this, James. There’s a stack of the same dirty old paper, which is why they didn’t stand out, but the ink is fresher and the hand is educated.’ She tapped the edges of the fan together and pushed it across to Hogget.
‘Is it code?’ Laura asked.
‘I do not think so.’ Hogget reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a leather case and extracted a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles which he perched on the end of his nose. ‘More likely highly abbreviated notes by someone who requires an aide memoire, I’d have said. You know the Swinburns well – do you recognise the handwriting?’ He handed her three pages.
‘It is all figures. Dates – and can this be amounts? It must be. Goodness.’ She peered at them, frustrated by the lack of words. ‘There is a similarity to Sir Walter’s hand, definitely. I have seen his account books occasionally. But it is probably typical of many educated people of his generation, wouldn’t you say?’ She flipped over the pages as the other began to argue about the next step to take.
‘This page is quite recent, look. April twelfth. When did you find these papers, Will?’
‘The Sunday before I met Theo in the church,’ he said readily. ‘That must have been the second of the month. I had been putting away prayer books after the service and I tripped in the vestry, fell against the wall and hit my elbow on a cupboard door. I had always assumed it was simply part of the panelling because it had no handle, but it opened and I saw it was full of papers. I took a quick look, saw that I really ought to sort them and check them against the registers in case of oversights and inaccuracies, and pushed them into that valise I’d been using to carry my clean vestments. I recalled them when Will and I were discussing how to research the tomb, then events rather overtook me.’ He winced and rubbed at the back of his head.
‘You didn’t mention them to anyone else? The Rector?’
‘No. I thought he might see it as criticism of his supervision of the parishes if I said I thought the registers had not been properly kept.’
‘So the first anyone knew about it was when I mentioned them at that dinner party,’ Theo said.
‘Some of the numbers are distinctive.’ Laura said. ‘Look, the seven with the bar through the upright and the zero with a diagonal line through it.’
‘Continental,’ Hogget said, looking at more of the sheets. ‘I should have spotted that.’
