What Happened at Midnight(4)

Another man would have been happy to see Beauregard approach on horseback. He would have welcomed the respite from the midmorning sun and the labor.

His host—John supposed that was the proper appellation for the man—had a mare saddled, following behind him.

“Mason,” Beauregard said, raising a hand in greeting. “I can’t believe you’ve started work already, and on the first morning, too.”

John glanced at the sun—already a good measure above the horizon—and shook his head. “No point in dawdling. I’ve been in your fields these last five hours. By the time the clock strikes ten, I scarcely consider it morning any longer.”

“That’s why I have an estate manager.” Beauregard grinned. “And friends.” He smacked John on the shoulder.

Friends was stretching the truth. Acquaintances, perhaps—and unlikely ones at that. John had dashed off a piece about his experiences with drainage techniques for a farmer’s gazette. Beauregard had read it and written to him, asking for help and clarification. Two months of correspondence later and John had been ready to write the man off as hopeless. That was when a chance mention in a letter had caught his attention.

“I did promise to introduce you to the neighbors,” Beauregard said. “I don’t expect you to work all day. You’re my guest, not a laborer.”

John didn’t bother correcting the man. Yes, John owned land in Southampton. But he had no illusions about what that meant. There was a lot less gentleman in him than there was farmer. He wore a thousand hats—veterinarian to his cattle, chemist when it came to soil treatment, mechanic to the plows. Right now, he was posing as Beauregard’s personal drainage engineer. He’d inherited a rather soggy piece of land himself, and had developed something of a talent for walking a piece of ground and understanding the underground streams, the seep of water just below the surface, the strange accidents of soil and slope that explained why one field was a swamp and the other a lush meadow.

But all of that was nothing to the role that he’d taken up now—that of investigator on behalf of his seven-year-old nephew, and, if his suspicions proved correct, judge, jury, and executioner, all in one.

“Where are we off to?”

“Doyle’s Grange first. That is what you requested, yes? It’s not even a mile away. You’ll like Sir Walter. He’s a capital fellow.”

“I’m sure he is,” John said. He gave further directions to the men who were working under him, straightened his coat, and then mounted his horse. But as the mare beneath him ambled down the lane to Doyle’s Grange, it wasn’t Sir Walter—whoever that was—who occupied his thoughts.

He’d looked for Mary Chartley for months after she left, but his efforts had ended in Basingstoke. She’d arrived there via rail; after that, he had only conjecture. She must have met her father, because two days after she’d fled her home, a doctor had issued a death certificate for Mr. Chartley. The parish church records showed that he’d been buried the day after.

Very convenient, that certificate of death. Almost as convenient as the book that Mary had put in the post to Mr. Lawson that same day—her father’s secret account book, the one they’d torn the house apart trying to find. The one she’d sworn she knew nothing about. It hadn’t shown the details of Mr. Chartley’s thefts, but it had contained all the information about the account he’d maintained with a separate London bank. The book itself had noted a few withdrawals, but the balance should still have been intact, at least as of a few months before his embezzlement was discovered.

But the record of those last months had gone missing. Someone—Mary herself, or perhaps her father—had sliced the last four pages from the accounting. When Lawson had his solicitors make a written demand on the bank, the account had yielded a few paltry hundreds of pounds. Not enough to give John’s nephew the start he deserved in life. But the accounting had told him one thing: The money was out there. He’d lost it once when he’d let Mary go. This time, he was going to find it.

John had been looking for Mary Chartley ever since. But he’d found no sign of her—nor of those four missing pages, nor even the eight thousand pounds that should have been waiting in the bank. He’d had no leads at all until Beauregard had mentioned her in passing in one of his letters.

Even Miss Mary Chartley, Lady Patsworth’s companion, noticed that the south field has become a swamp this spring.

It could have been some other Mary Chartley. The name wasn’t uncommon. But the letter had come two days after the investigator he’d hired had officially declared the search hopeless. It had seemed providential. And so instead of washing his hands of Beauregard and his swampy fields, John had written back.

If it’s not too forward, might I suggest that I come and see to their drainage myself? It will be much easier than trying to explain the principles via correspondence.

“There it is,” Beauregard said as they rounded a bend in the road and the trees of the wood gave way to open meadow. “Doyle’s Grange.”

It was, he was sure, a charming cottage. But John didn’t care about the ornamental hedges out front. The gate—if you could call it that—was a mess of grape leaves and such, decoration so overblown that it rendered the fence useless as a barrier. It had no doubt been commissioned by a lazy fellow who preferred tipple to work. Someone had taken care with the flowers; they sprang up in a glorious summer profusion of pinks and reds.