Two weeks after the trial, the court officially declared that Thomas Hartley had been innocent of every charge. It was printed on the front page of *The Times*. Clara bought twelve copies—she could not help it—cutting out the article and reading it over and over until Polly teased her that she would wear the words right off the paper.
All the Marlowe estates were sold to pay the Earl's debts: the great house in London, the country house in Kent, the paintings, the carriages, the horses, the silver—everything. And from that money, the court ordered that £40,000 be returned to the daughters of Thomas Hartley—the same £40,000 their father had lent the Earl so many years before in good faith with an honest handshake.
Clara did not spend a penny of it on herself. With Mr. Drummond's help, she created something she called the Hartley Fund: it would pay for lawyers for poor men and women who had been falsely accused and could not afford to defend themselves, and feed and house the wives and children they left behind while they waited for justice.
"Nobody helped my father," she told Mr. Drummond, sitting in his office at the bank. "Nobody helped my mother, or my sister, or me. I want it to be different for the next family. That is all."
The old banker took off his spectacles and wiped them for a long time before he answered. "Thomas would be very proud of you, my dear," he said at last. "Very proud indeed."
There was one more thing Clara did with her father's money: it was the first thing, and it mattered to her more than anything else.
Thomas Hartley had been buried in an unmarked grave beside Newgate Prison, among thieves and murderers, with no stone and no name. Clara could not bear it. So, on a quiet gray morning in January, her father was brought home: laid to rest in the little churchyard at Ravenshire beneath a great old yew tree, beside a newly carved stone. Clara had her mother moved there, too, from the poor London graveyard where she had lain for seven years. Now they were together again, side by side, as they should always have been.
The stone was white and simple. It read:
*Thomas Hartley and his beloved wife, Mary.*
*An honest man wrongly accused. A loving woman who never doubted him.*
*Together again.*
And beneath that, in smaller letters:
*A torn page is like a broken promise. You cannot always undo the damage, but you can try to hold things together.*
Clara knelt in the frozen grass for a long time that morning. Polly knelt beside her holding her hand, the old rag doll made of blue cloth tucked under her other arm.
"We did it, Papa," Clara whispered. "We found the truth. Everyone knows now. Everyone knows who you were."