Chapter 26
Jonathan came at ten in the morning with a breakthrough.
Edmund was at the desk in the study, where he had been since six o’clock, sorting Margaret’s sealed letter, Mrs. Holt’s notes, and Arabella’s bundle into three neat piles, when Jonathan let himself in without knocking.
"It is done."
"What is?"
"I have met Thomas Haddon. I have his history in writing, every year of it, and I have his agreement to testify against Lord Graystone in exchange for clemency."
Edmund set down his pen.
“Sit.”
Jonathan did. He laid a sheaf of papers on the desk between them.
Thomas Haddon. Born in Bristol forty-two years ago, employed as a clerk in three different counting-houses before he had taken to debt collection at twenty-six.
Engaged in Lord Graystone’s service from roughly the year Edmund had married Margaret.
Present at the back door of the Ashfield London house on six occasions across the autumn of Margaret’s illness.
Present at the private interview Lord Graystone had granted Robert on the evening Robert had attempted to withdraw. The same person Sophia had glimpsed at the bookseller’s shop. The same person who had sent the anonymous notes and assembled the financial evidence.
He had kept copies of everything that had passed through his hands for nine years. He had been Lord Graystone’s most trusted operative, and he had been shrewd enough to understand that trust was not, in Lord Graystone’s vocabulary, a permanent condition.
It was, set down in a clerk's careful hand, the same picture they had already assembled for themselves, with a name on every line of it. Edmund read to the bottom of the last page and set it down. “In exchange for what?”
“Clemency. Not freedom. He will serve a sentence. He has asked only that he serve a shorter one than he would otherwise serve, and that his sister in Bristol be protected from any retaliation. The magistrate has accepted the bargain. His testimony, combined with Mrs. Holt’s, Margaret’s sealed letter, Arabella’s bundle, and the financial evidence, is an airtight case. ”
Edmund sat for a long moment.
“I owe a debt to a man I have never met.”
“You do.”
“He will serve time for what he has done. That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Jonathan said. “It is not. The debt will be paid in the courtroom. He is not a good man. He is, however, the man who saved your wife’s life by sending you that packet of evidence, and you are entitled to feel the weight of the debt even if the law cannot.”
Edmund nodded and rose. He crossed to the small side table where the brandy decanter stood. He poured two glasses.
“To the man at the bookseller’s.”
Jonathan nodded his head and drank.
***
Henry was waiting for him outside the study at nine that evening.
Edmund had heard the whispered conversation between Mrs. Pratt and the boy in the upper corridor at half past eight, and he had not understood that the conversation had concluded with Henry getting out of bed and coming down to the lower landing in his nightclothes with his wooden horse clutched against his chest.
The boy was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. He stood when Edmund came out.
“Uncle.”
“Henry. It is late.”
“I know. I came down anyway.”
Edmund looked at his nephew. Henry looked back. The boy had Robert's eyes. He had been holding the wooden horse as ballast rather than as a toy, and his small face was carefully composed. He had decided something on his own and come to deliver it.
Edmund knelt.
He went down on one knee, on the marble of the lower landing, so that his face was level with his nephew’s.
“Uncle, I know there is something wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“Everyone has been talking very quietly for two weeks. And Sophia looked like she had been crying yesterday morning. And Mama keeps sending me out of the room when Mr. Astley comes. Mr. Weston used to play with me when he came. He has not played with me for two weeks. So, I have worked it out that there is something wrong, and I would like you to tell me what it is.”
Edmund did not answer. He had been prepared for several interviews that fortnight. He had not been prepared for the one his nephew initiated.
“Henry.”
“Yes.”
“There are some difficult things that grown-ups are sorting out. They are not things you need to worry about. Sophia and I are going to make sure everything is all right.”
“That is what Mama said when Papa was sick.”
“Henry.”
“Mama said that. Then Papa died.”
Edmund did not, for a moment, breathe.
“Henry. I am not lying to you. I am telling you the truth. The difficult thing is going to be sorted out. The people you love are not in danger. I would not lie to you about this. Not after your father. Not ever.”
Henry considered his uncle’s words. He looked at the wooden horse in his hands and back up.
“Is the bad man going to be caught?”
Edmund’s breath stopped.
“What bad man?”
“The bad man in the story Sophia told me. The story about the brave knight. She told it to me three nights ago, when she put me to bed, and I have been thinking about it.
The story has a knight in it who is looking for a bad man because the bad man hurt people, and the knight catches the bad man in the end. I have worked out that the story is not really a story. It is something that is happening. So, my question is whether the bad man is going to be caught.”
Edmund looked at his nephew.
He had been prepared, by every standard he had been holding himself to since Margaret had died, to manage a seven-year-old boy’s questions about the goings-on of the household with the careful unalarming generalities a guardian was expected to deploy.
He was not going to manage it with generalities.
“Yes. The bad man is going to be caught.”
“Soon?”
“Soon, Henry. Very soon.”
“Good.”
The boy nodded once. Then he took two steps forward and he put his arms around Edmund’s neck, with the wooden horse pressed against the back of Edmund’s collar, and he held on with the absolute trust he had always given Edmund without requiring Edmund to deserve it.
Edmund put his arms around him, holding his nephew close. .
He held him longer than was customary. The boy did not, on his part, attempt to withdraw.
Over Henry’s shoulder, at the far end of the corridor, Edmund saw Sophia.
She was standing at the foot of the back stairs, in her wrap, with a book in her hand she had clearly been on her way to put back in the library. She had stopped when she saw them. Her face, in the lamplight, was completely unguarded.
He did not have a name for what was on her face. He did not need one.
He had no idea how he had reached the age of thirty-four without arranging for that woman to be in his life. He had even less idea how he was going to continue to live, from that evening forward, without her in it.
He pressed his face briefly into the small warm curve of his nephew’s neck. He breathed.
He did not look up at Sophia again. He was not able to.
***
The library was quiet at half past nine.
Catherine had taken Arabella upstairs. Henry was asleep. Jonathan had gone home an hour earlier, reluctantly. He had been informed by the lady of the house that he was permitted to call again at nine in the morning and not, on that occasion, any sooner.
Edmund was reading.
Sophia was at the other end of the long table, with a book of her own. The lamp between them was the steady lamp they used in the library at that hour, and they had not spoken for nearly twenty minutes because they had not needed to. The day had settled into them both. They were sitting in it.
The knock at the front door arrived without warning.
It was urgent. The night footman crossed the entrance hall at a pace Edmund had not heard him use in months. The door opened. There was a brief muttered conversation in the hall, and then footsteps came down the corridor at a near-run. The library door opened without the customary knock.
It was the footman. He was holding a folded paper.
“My Lord. From Mr. Astley. The runner says it cannot wait.” Edmund took the paper. He broke the seal in the lamplight.
The note was short. The hand was Jonathan’s clerk’s, hastily written.
Lord Graystone has not been seen at his London residence since three this afternoon. Servants confirm he left in considerable haste. He took papers, valuables, a small traveling case. He may be making for the ports. We have until daylight at the most. Come at once.
Edmund read it twice and looked up. Sophia was already on her feet. She had read the change in his face within half a second, and she had set down her book, crossing the room to him.
“Edmund.”
“He has run.”
“Where?”
“The ports, Jonathan’s solicitor thinks. Probably Dover.”"Then he does not reach the water ahead of us." That was not a question, and Edmund did not treat it as one. He took Sophia’s hand.
They went out of the library together. The first peaceful evening the house had known in a fortnight had lasted three hours, and it ended in the time it took to cross the hall.
The lamps came up again, the servants moved, the whole house turned itself, quietly and at great speed, toward the road to the coast.