Chapter 27 #2
William had said only that he wished to review several estate matters before the end of the month.
He had not said which matters. He had sent the note in the neutral, businesslike tone of a man requesting a routine meeting, and Harwood had replied promptly, as he always did, and arrived now with the air of perfectness.
“Your Grace.” He settled into the chair across the desk with ease, setting the folio on his knee and opening it to the first page.
“I took the liberty of bringing the quarterly summaries through to December. There are several outstanding contracts I wanted your signature on before the year closes, and the tenant renewal agreements for the northern field are ready to–”
“Leave those for now,” William interrupted.
Harwood looked up. “Of course, Your Grace.” He closed the folio, unhurried. “What would you like to start with?”
“The orphanage accounts.”
“The St. Clement’s disbursements.” Harwood nodded, opened the folio again, and produced a page with the smooth efficiency of a man who had his files in order.
“I have the full year here. Disbursements have been consistent—the quarterly allowance, the supplementary administrative costs, the emergency provision we made in November after the fever case.” He laid the page on the desk. “All in order.”
William looked at the page for a moment without touching it.
“Walk me through the administrative costs,” he demanded.
“Standard overhead.” Harwood’s voice was easy, the voice of a man answering a question he had answered before.
William forced himself not to react. “Management of the account requires a degree of administration—correspondence, legal maintenance of the account structure, and the occasional third-party assessment. It runs to approximately the same figure each quarter, as you’ll see. ”
“And this account.” William pointed to the supplementary account reference on Cecily’s notes, which were beneath the desk where Harwood could not see them. He read the account name aloud.
Harwood looked at the number. “Property management administrative services,” he explained. “They handle the structural oversight of the charitable arrangements. It’s been in place since–”
“What is the firm’s address?”
A pause. Brief this time, but William was watching for it.
“I’d have to check the correspondence file for the precise address. I don’t have it on hand.”
“That’s fine,” William said. “I have it.” He produced the page from Cecily’s notes and set it on the desk. The address, the account name, and the company registration—all were noted in her handwriting, with the page number of the ledger where each entry appeared. “I found it this morning.”
Harwood looked at the page longer than necessary. “I see the Duchess has been reviewing–”
“The figures don’t match,” William spoke over him.
He opened the main estate ledger and the supplementary ledger side by side and turned them both toward the man.
“The amount transferred from the orphanage fund on the last four quarterly dates is larger than the amount received by the administrative account on each corresponding date.” He set Cecily’s summary page beside the ledgers.
“The difference, across four quarters, is here. Where does it go?”
Harwood looked at the ledgers, at the summary, then at William.
“Er… Your Grace, there may be a processing lag,” he stammered. “The account doesn’t always–”
“Eight months,” William cut in. “The first discrepancy I can trace is eight months ago. That is not a processing lag.” He held Harwood’s gaze. “I’d like you to account for the difference.”
A pause.
Harwood looked at the ledgers again with the expression of a man doing calculations.
William waited, let him calculate, said nothing.
“There were additional costs,” Harwood said finally. “In the latter part of the year. Legal consultation regarding the account structure. It was necessary to… er… restructure certain arrangements, and the cost was absorbed at the administrative level rather than–”
“Show me the invoice,” William demanded.
“I would need to retrieve it from–”
“The correspondence files,” William finished. “Which you have with you.”
Harwood looked at the folio on his knee.
“Harwood,” William said quietly. “I have been sitting at this desk for ten years. I have signed what you put in front of me because I trusted your management of this estate. That trust was not unlimited. It was simply extended without proper verification, which is a different thing, and the difference is something I intend to understand now.” He paused. “Show me the invoice.”
More silence.
Harwood opened the folio and turned several pages. He turned several more. He looked through the correspondence section and squinted.
“It appears,” he muttered, “not to be in this file.”
“No,” William said. “I don’t imagine it is.”
He opened the bottom drawer, produced the full set of ledgers—not Harwood’s presentation copies, but the originals—and stacked them on the desk. He had done his preparation and intended to be thorough.
“I spent this morning going through everything I signed in the last three years,” he said.
“Not the summaries, but the originals.” He opened the first ledger to a marked page.
“This is the northern tenant account. The rent rolls for the past two years show consistent collection, which matches what you have reported to me. But the bank deposits on these dates”—he opened the second ledger—“are consistently lower than the collected amounts.” He looked at Harwood.
“Not by much. Never enough to demand immediate attention. But consistently.”
Harwood said nothing.
“The east outbuilding maintenance account,” William continued, opening a third ledger.
“Materials costs logged against contracts with firms I cannot locate in any current trade registry. Significant expenditure across eighteen months.” He turned another marked page.
“The tenant improvement fund—money designated for cottage repairs that I authorized two years ago, the full amount disbursed according to the accounts, but three of the four cottages have repairs outstanding that Garret in the northern field has been requesting since last winter.”
He closed the ledgers and looked at Harwood.
Harwood was very still.
“This is not just about the orphanage,” William said. “The orphanage is where it was most visible, because the Duchess looked at it with fresh eyes and without ten years of accumulated trust in the way. But this has been happening across the estate.” He narrowed his eyes at the man. “For how long?”
Harwood was mute.
“Harwood.”
“Seven years,” Harwood forced out.
Willim gasped and dropped his head into his hands.
“Seven years?” He raised his head.
“It was small at the beginning. Marginal amounts. Nothing that would—it was never intended to be–” Harwood broke off.
“You came home and sat at this desk, and the estate needed management. You signed what was placed before you because you were nineteen and you had two small children to raise. You were doing what you could, and I…” He sighed. “I saw an opportunity.”
“Seven years,” William said again.
He looked at the man and thought about everything he had not looked at for seven years, what it had cost, and who had paid it. He felt cold anger rise inside him.
“There is one more thing,” he bit out. “I’d like you to look at this.”
He reached into the inner drawer and produced the Brighton note. He unfolded it and set it in the center of the desk between them.
Harwood looked at it, his face becoming tight.
“I received this note at the Pemberton ball in Brighton,” William elaborated.
“Three months ago. I went to the eastern shore as it instructed, and someone struck me from behind.” He looked at Harwood steadily.
“I have been trying to place the handwriting since the morning I found it. I had my suspicions, but I dismissed them because the handwriting is disguised. But the capital B”—he pointed to the word behind in the note—“sits consistently above the line. As does every capital B in the estate accounts prepared in your hand over fifteen years.” He pulled one of Harwood’s account pages beside the note. “Here. Here. And here.”
Harwood looked at the comparison.
“Handwriting alone is not a conviction,” William allowed.
“I know that. So tell me this.” He leaned forward.
“The week I was in Brighton, the week I received that note, you submitted a standard quarterly review request for my signature. I found it in the files this morning, dated the same week. You had asked me to sign three large transfers: one to the property management account, one to the maintenance fund, and one—the largest—described as a legal retainer for estate restructuring.”
His lips thinned. “I was supposed to sign them that week. I did not because I was unconscious on a beach, and then I was managing a scandal and getting married. By the time I was back in London, the quarterly review had been rescheduled.” A pause.
“Those transfers were never signed. And when I look at the account now, they were never made. They simply disappeared from the record.”
He sat back. “Someone needed me incapacitated for that week. Someone who knew the quarterly review was scheduled. Someone who understood that if I were managing a crisis, I would not be reviewing accounts.” He arched an eyebrow. “Tell me that was a coincidence.”
The room was very quiet.
Harwood looked at the Brighton note. “I thought,” he said finally, “that you would not last. Your father… your father understood the estate. He understood how it worked—the relationships, the systems. He trusted the people who managed it because he understood them. He understood me, and did not object.”
William looked at him squarely. “If you wanted me dead, you would have made certain of it. You wanted me, what? Frightened? Discredited? Unable to review the accounts with a clear head because I was recovering from a blow, marrying a woman under scandal, and managing the consequences?”
Harwood looked at the handwriting, then at William.
“I did not mean for you to be seriously harmed.” It was the voice of a man who had run out of road. “The intention was simply to get you to sign the documents that would… hide the missing funds. The men I hired were told to deliver a blow that would incapacitate you if you refused, not–”
“So it was to hide the missing funds,” William cut him off. “And the scandal?”
“It was simply a coincidence. I didn’t plan for it to happen.” Harwood said.
“You miscalculated a great many things.”
William stood. He looked at the man across the desk, who had managed this estate for fifteen years, who had sat in this room and looked him in the eye every quarter, who had used his sisters’ names as bait and had been stealing from orphaned children and had hired someone to put him in the tide at Brighton because the quarterly accounts were coming due.
“You used my sisters’ names in that note. To guarantee I would come.”
Harwood said nothing.
“They were fourteen and sixteen.” William couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “You used their names.”
“It was the most effective–”
“Get out of this house,” William snapped.
Harwood blanched and started sputtering.
“You are dismissed. Effective immediately. The full accounting will go to my solicitor this afternoon,” William continued. “Whatever was taken will be documented and pursued through every available channel. I strongly recommend you do not make that process more difficult than it needs to be.”
Harwood looked at him for a moment. Then he stood, picked up his folio, and left.
William listened to his footsteps in the corridor. The front door closed.
He looked at the desk. The house around him was very quiet.
He had fixed the accounts. He had dismissed Harwood. He had recovered the evidence and identified the man who had put him on a beach and endangered everything he had spent ten years protecting. He had done all of it this afternoon with methodical efficiency.
So why do I feel hollow?
The victory felt like nothing. It felt like winning an argument in an empty room. He should have been sharing the news with Cecily, and then they’d laugh about it.
He looked at his hands on the desk. Then he looked out the window. At the late November afternoon light, grey and bleak.
He stared for a long time. Then he reached for his coat, and went out.