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Her Aunt Called Her Useless in Front of Everyone — Until Beatrice Proved the Northern Accounts Were False

Her Aunt Called Her Useless in Front of Everyone — Until Beatrice Proved the Northern Accounts Were False

Chapter 3

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"Four hundred tons," the solicitor murmured, looking at the page."Indeed," Beatrice said smoothly. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a stack of folded, stamped receipts. "And yet, here are the dockside receipts from Sunderland for September, bearing Mr. Hawcroft’s signature. They show the loading of no less than three thousand tons of high-grade Durham coal onto vessels bound for London. Three thousand tons. Not four hundred."The silence in the drawing room was absolute."A clerical error!" Hawcroft stammered, his face a mottled red."A clerical error that repeats itself for months?" Beatrice asked relentlessly, dropping more documents onto the table. "And what of the Lancashire mills? The ledger claims machinery failure halted production, yet I have the invoices from the dye merchants in Manchester, billing us for the coloring of forty thousand yards of broadcloth during those exact months. Mr. Hawcroft has been operating two sets of books, reporting a loss to Highfield while siphoning the profits into a private account. And now, he seeks to convince my foolish cousin to sell estates worth over two hundred thousand pounds for a mere ten thousand—undoubtedly to a proxy for Mr. Hawcroft himself."
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Her Aunt Called Her Useless in Front of Everyone — Until Beatrice Proved the Northern Accounts Were False

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