“My husband helped build that bridge,” she told Eleanor. “Your father watched over the work. He said nobody was to be turned away from the houses while the trust stood.”
Eleanor asked if Agnes had kept any records. The widow opened a biscuit tin and showed her a narrow folded receipt marked with the year, a payment, and William Finch's tidy initials. It was a humble piece of paper, but the date on it matched one of the sums Fenwick had accused William of stealing. Eleanor copied it into her notebook and promised nothing beyond this: she would try to understand why the records disagreed.
Fenwick learned of the visit almost immediately. He was a long-faced man with silver at his temples, dark gloves even on mild days, and the habit of speaking about the poor as though they were weather to be endured. He intercepted Eleanor outside the dining room and explained that governesses were employed to teach children, not to wander about asking impertinent questions. He added that an accusation against her father remained an accusation, however elegantly his daughter chose to speak.
“My father requested an examination of the ledgers,” Eleanor said. “Did you ever provide him one?”
“The estate owes you no explanations, Miss Finch.”
“I asked a question, Mr. Fenwick. That is not the same as demanding a favor.”
For the first time his smile vanished. He advised her to remember how difficult it had been to find respectable employment in the district, and she understood the threat clearly enough. That evening she returned to the schoolroom determined to stop until she found Thomas sitting beside the window with a new drawing. It showed three rectangular drawers, a round object like a globe, and a tiny figure in a dress standing before them.
“Is that your mother?” Eleanor asked softly.
Thomas nodded. He placed his finger on the bottom drawer, then pressed it firmly against the page three times. When she asked whether he wanted to tell her more, he shook his head and folded the paper away. Eleanor did not press him, but she began to see that the boy's silences contained information nobody had tried patiently enough to hear.
The library at Greymere was not a room anyone entered casually. Its towering shelves contained old legal volumes, natural histories, account books, and the private correspondence of three generations of Wycliffes. A large globe stood beside the fireplace, and beneath the western shelves sat a mahogany cabinet with three broad drawers, brass handles, and a small keyhole in the center. Fenwick kept the keys to most estate records, and Mrs. Tully had warned Eleanor that Adrian disliked anyone touching his father's private books.
Yet on a stormy morning Thomas asked for a volume about mechanical clocks that had once belonged to his mother. Mrs. Tully allowed Eleanor to fetch it while she supervised the cleaning of the adjoining rooms. The book was not on the shelf where the catalogue placed it. When Eleanor finally found it behind an old atlas, a loose leaf slipped from its pages and floated onto the carpet.