Chapter 5 #2
Henry looked toward Simmonds. The man sat upon a hall chair with Sarah beside him, breathing into a folded cloth and refusing to meet anyone’s gaze.
When Henry answered, the command in his voice had softened. “Send word if the obstruction is above the passage.”
“I will.”
“And if the roof itself must be entered, no one goes out until it is assessed.”
“That was already the rule.”
“Then we agree.”
“Domestic harmony has arrived early.”
He almost smiled. “In smoke.”
Margaret watched him take charge of the movement toward the ballroom.
He did not order residents as soldiers. He asked Thomas to bring the account box, placed Mercer beside Simmonds without announcing why, and instructed the servants to carry water and bread rather than attempting to rescue the entire breakfast.
Within two minutes, the west corridor had cleared enough for Joseph to open the dining-room door.
Smoke had settled into layers. The highest portion of the room was black, the middle gray, and the air near the floor merely unpleasant. Margaret wrapped a damp cloth over her mouth. Joseph did the same, then showed Will how to approach the grate from the side.
They carried the burning coals out in two iron scuttles and transferred them to the kitchen range. Margaret opened the remaining lower window while Joseph crouched before the hearth and shone a lantern upward.
“Blocked above the smoke shelf,” he said. “Not a natural fall.”
“How can you tell?”
“The soot is packed too evenly. A fallen nest leaves twigs. Loose mortar leaves gaps. This has cloth in it.”
Margaret knelt beside him. The stone hearth pressed cold through her skirt, and soot gritted beneath her palm. Above the blackened rear of the grate, something fibrous protruded from the narrow opening.
“Can you draw it down?”
“Not without bringing the rest upon us. We go above.”
Will fetched the long iron rod used for clearing flues, but Joseph refused to thrust it upward until they knew what had been lodged and whether anything remained hot near the blockage.
Margaret approved. Destroying evidence through energetic repair was still destruction, even if no one yet knew whether they possessed evidence.
They crossed through the service corridor and climbed the west stair.
The House smelled different on every level.
The ground floor held smoke and breakfast; the first-floor passage smelled of damp wool and furniture polish; the upper corridor carried wet plaster, cold slate, and the mineral odor of rain entering where a roof ought to refuse it.
The roof passage began behind a low door near the former nursery. Joseph unlocked it with a key from his own ring. Margaret noted this without comment. She possessed a duplicate, but the House functioned partly because more than one competent person could open the correct door.
Inside, the ceiling sloped low enough that Joseph had to bend.
Narrow boards ran between the rafters. Daylight entered through cracks around the roof hatch, illuminating suspended dust and thin threads of rain.
The chimney stack rose through the passage in a broad brick column, its mortar patched in three colors from decades of unequal repair.
Joseph ran his hand along the bricks. “Warm below. Cold here.”
“The obstruction is beneath us?”
“Between the dining-room throat and this cleanout.”
A small iron door had been set into the side of the stack at knee height. Its latch was black with old soot but not rusted shut. Joseph examined the screws.
“These have been moved.”
Margaret crouched. The iron plate bore fresh scratches where a tool had slipped. Soot lay thick along the lower edge, but the upper hinge showed a narrow clean line.
“How recently?”
“Since the last proper sweeping.”
“That was six weeks ago.”
“More recently than that, I should think. The scratch has no rust.”
Joseph inserted a screwdriver and opened the plate by degrees.
Soot spilled first, not in the loose fall of ordinary residue but in a dense black slide. Margaret held a coal scuttle beneath it while Joseph used the rod to ease the blockage forward. A wad of sacking appeared, followed by broken slate, a length of thin board, and several handfuls of damp mortar.
The material had been packed deliberately around the bend of the flue.
Joseph sat back on his heel. “No sweep did that.”
Margaret examined the debris without touching it bare-handed. “Could roof repairs have pushed it in?”
“Not through a closed iron door.”
“Who has the key?”
“You. Me. The sweep borrows one in our presence.”
“The lock is poor.”
“A child with wire could open it.”
Margaret disliked mysteries that admitted too many people. They encouraged accusation before fact.
“Lay each piece separately,” she said. “Will, fetch sacking, twine, and the clean invoice paper from Thomas. No one throws anything away.”
Joseph lifted the broken slate. “This matches the east roof.”
“That proves we possess a leaking roof.”
“It proves the person did not purchase special slate for villainy.”
“Economy is not exculpation.”
They cleared the obstruction piece by piece.
The sacking had been folded around the thin board and wedged against the mortar so the mass would remain in the flue long enough to force smoke downward.
It had not been placed to ignite. Damp stone and cloth would choke the draw, soil the dining room, and create visible proof that the House was unsafe.
The distinction did not make the act harmless. It made the intention colder.
“They wanted smoke, not fire,” Margaret said.
Joseph looked at the packed material. “Enough smoke to send a trustee running for closure.”
“Croft already has his notice.”
“He may wish the House to prove him right.”
Margaret did not answer. Sir Reginald benefited, but benefit was not proof. The person who had entered the roof passage might have served him, anticipated him, or pursued another grievance entirely.
Will returned with the requested materials. Thomas followed despite Margaret’s instruction that residents remain below.
“I was told to bring paper,” he said, breathing carefully after the stairs. “Will cannot distinguish invoice stock from kitchen wrapping.”
Will objected from behind him. “I can distinguish them. I prefer the kitchen paper.”
Thomas handed Margaret several clean sheets, then peered at the debris. “Is that writing?”
A corner of paper protruded from a fold in the sacking.
Margaret had taken it for the inner face of the cloth, blackened and stiff with soot.
She used the tip of Joseph’s screwdriver to separate the layers.
The paper had survived because it was folded twice and pressed between the dry board and the sacking.
Its outer surface was nearly black. The inner fold remained gray-brown, with ink still visible in several ruled columns.
“Do not unfold it further,” she said.
Thomas crouched at a distance. “It resembles an account leaf.”
Joseph held the lantern nearer without letting the flame approach the paper. A torn upper corner bore half a heading. Beneath it, three entries remained legible.
The first concerned carriage hire. The second recorded a fee for copying instruments. The third named a man Margaret knew.
“Edmund Vale,” she said.
Thomas looked at her. “Sir Reginald’s former clerk?”
“He left last spring.”
“Dismissed?” Joseph asked.
“Promoted elsewhere, according to Sir Reginald.”
“Elsewhere being a broad district.”
Margaret leaned nearer. The entry beside Vale’s name included a sum for travel to St. Bride’s parish and a second sum for lodging. A date appeared beside it, smudged but recognizable.
It fell less than a fortnight before the copied register had been made.
Her pulse altered, though nothing else in the narrow passage did. Rain continued through the roof. Joseph breathed beside her. Thomas steadied himself with one hand against a rafter.
“St. Bride’s,” Thomas said. “Is that the parish named in the marriage copy?”
“Yes.”
Joseph’s caustic humor disappeared. “Then we have our rat.”
“We have a payment entry bearing a name and parish,” Margaret said. “We do not yet know who made the entry, who paid the money, whether it concerns the register, or how this page entered the flue.”
“It entered because someone wished it burned.”
“The obstruction was damp. A man wishing to burn paper would choose a functioning fire.”
“Then he wished it hidden.”
“More likely. Still not proved.”
Thomas studied the torn edge. “This came from a larger ledger.”
Margaret looked at him. “How can you tell?”
“The ruling continues through the tear, and the left margin shows binding holes. It was removed from a sewn account book, not written separately.”
Joseph lifted the sacking with two fingers. “Could Vale have put it here?”
“Could half London have?” Margaret said. “Yes. We will begin with what the page states, not whom we would enjoy blaming.”
She instructed Thomas to copy only what could be read without flattening or cleaning the original.
He wrote in the roof passage with his paper upon a narrow board while Margaret dictated the visible words, uncertain letters, folds, stains, and torn edges.
Joseph and Will signed the description of where the paper had been found.
Margaret added the time, the chimney location, and each person present.
The original went into a clean piece of oiled paper, then into a small cloth bag tied and sealed with Margaret’s signet as co-trustee. The remaining debris was separated into sacks and marked according to its position within the blockage.
Only after the evidence had been secured did Joseph clear the last soot from the flue.