The Duke Didn't Want Love — He Wanted a Practical Wife. Then Her Carriage Arrived 40 Minutes Late
Chapter 13
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
At Briarcombe, Avery remained alone with the papers. The older receipt recorded only part of a June shipment; the attached note claimed Helena had witnessed another delivery in October, though she had just said she had seen none.He looked at the fastening, at the dates, at the confident signature of the clerk on the older sheet. The genuine paper did not prove the newer assertion; he had treated them as though it did.Avery drew a blank sheet toward him. There was one question he could answer without asking Helena to plead for herself: Had any such October delivery occurred at all?The next morning, Avery sent a message to Thomas Mercer requesting that the solicitor come from York and bring a clerk who had never worked for the Briarcombe estate. While he waited, Avery had the bound ledgers collected and their contents listed in the presence of Mrs. Bell and a household witness. He did not summon Helena: for the first time since she arrived, he understood that asking her to untangle the accusation would be asking the injured person to repair his error for him.Mercer came before midday—a sensible man who had never mistaken haste for competence. He listened to Avery's account without promising a miraculous solution. "We shall establish what was delivered," he said, "what was paid, and who had authority over the papers. The accusation against Miss Morland is not a substitute for evidence." The sentence struck Avery harder than the solicitor intended.Simon Fenwick arrived with a battered pocket notebook and several handwritten receipts. His entries were untidy, but dated. In June, he explained, enough slate and timber had arrived to cover a portion of Ruth Elwood's roof; a larger order had been promised, but had not come. He had been paid for part of his work, and the estate book reflected a much greater sum."Why did you not tell me?" Avery asked.Fenwick's hands tightened on his cap. "I told Mr. Vane. I thought it would be set right. A man does not like to lose the next job because he asks too loudly after the last."Avery remembered Ruth's reluctance to complain; he was beginning to hear how many people had spoken and how carefully he had arranged not to listen.Mercer wrote to the supplier named on the June paper and sent a clerk to compare the merchant's retained book. The clerk returned with the June entry, but no matching entry for the 1st of October: the older stamp was genuine; the later note borrowed its authority without earning it. Fenwick, meanwhile, confirmed he had received no such slates.Until those two accounts were compared, Avery could not safely decide whether the estate had suffered careless record-keeping or fraud."The June acknowledgment was real," Mercer told Avery after both accounts were checked. "The delivery alleged for the 1st of October never happened."There was the whole deception, stripped of its impressive papers and respectable names: money marked as spent did not match the materials that had reached the cottages; Helena had been made to appear as a witness to goods that had never been there.