Page 10 of The Incident at Ingleton (Beau Monde Secrets #3)

A mixture of desperation and embarrassment swirled in Walter’s stomach as he pounded on the door. He’d seen Neville Butler and Lady Hester disappear into the old schoolroom together. He knew perfectly well that Butler’s courtship was none of his business, but his doubts about Butler’s integrity made him linger in the corridor... just in case. In case of what? He had no clear idea.

He lurked a few feet away from the room, feeling very foolish, until the sound of a voice raised in anger or fear called him into action. He’d expected the door to swing open at the turn of the knob, but something or someone held it shut. That only increased his concern.

“I say, is everything all right in there?” He shouted, not knowing how well his voice would carry through the solid wooden door.

Lady Hester responded by shouting “ Help !”

That did it! Walter lunged at the door, slamming it with his shoulder. Maybe he hit it a little too hard, because the door flew open and Walter stumbled into the room, crashing into Butler.

“What the hell are you doing here, Haworth?” Butler snapped. “This is a private conversation.”

For once, Walter’s glasses genuinely needed to be straightened. That gave him a moment to catch his breath. “When a gentleman hears a young lady calling for help, he answers the call.” He glared at Butler, then turned toward Lady Hester.

He could see no signs of physical injury, but Lady Hester leaned against the desk at the front of the room, looking as if her knees were too weak to hold her up. A few cautious steps brought Walter to her side. She seemed to be trembling with fear or shock. Had he known her better, he might’ve reassured her with a comforting touch, but that didn’t seem proper.

Instead, he leaned over her. “Lady Hester, are you well? Do you require medical attention?”

“Medical attention!?” Butler said scornfully. “I haven’t so much as touched her. We were merely talking about a private matter.” He very nearly growled the last few words.

“You don’t have to touch a person to hurt them!” Walter snapped. Then he winced at the bite in his own voice. He’d better get his temper under control. He drew a deep breath and slowly released it, counting to three.

Walter cleared his throat and tried a less impassioned approach. “I think you had better leave the room, Mr. Butler. You have caused Lady Hester enough distress for one night.”

Butler raised his eyebrows. “And leave you alone here with her? That would be most improper and most unfair, since I was here first.”

Walter clenched his hands into fists. “We will leave the door open, so there will be no impropriety. But if you are worried about the situation, you may fetch—” he paused to think of who could best comfort Lady Hester.

Had Rose been here, he might have relied on her, since Lady Hester seemed to get along well with her. But though Lady Hester’s sister-in-law was not at the castle tonight, she did have a cousin at hand.

“You may tell Lady Inglewhite that she is needed in here,” Walter said.

“And Frank,” Lady Hester whispered. “I would like to talk to Frank.”

“Very well.” Butler stalked out of the room in a fit of pique.

The door slammed shut behind the curate, but true to his word, Walter opened it up again, using the nearest chair to keep it from swinging shut. With the door propped open, a faint murmur of voices drifted in from the ballroom, reminding them that the other guests were only a stone’s throw away.

Walter ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I am very sorry that you have been so ill-treated, my lady.” The words didn’t seem at all adequate, but he doubted there was anything he could say that would be adequate. “Are you sure he did you no harm?”

Lady Hester gulped, but remained silent. Judging from the way her hands trembled, she seemed to be in a state of shock. Walter silently brought her a chair. She cast a grateful look at him as she sank down on it. She rested a moment before answering him.

“He didn’t hurt me, but he frightened me.” She spoke so softly, he had to lean in to catch her words. “He was trying to compromise me so that I’d have to marry him.”

Walter’s jaw dropped. He shut it quickly, not wanting to gape, but he could hardly believe what he’d heard. “I had no idea he was such a scoundrel.”

Or had he known? He’d suspected Neville Butler of embezzling money from a charitable institution. He’d known that Butler courted Lady Hester primarily for mercenary motives. Was it really so surprising that he was guilty of other dishonorable actions?

“I had no idea, either,” Lady Hester said. “You were right to warn me about him.”

Walter could only shake his head. “I thought he was only a fortune hunter. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of such manipulation.” The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Her whole life could have been ruined! “Perhaps you ought to pursue legal action against him.”

She lifted her eyes up, surprised. “On what grounds? It’s not as if he assaulted me or kidnapped me. I suppose he did threaten me, but he wasn’t threatening bodily harm...”

“I think marrying someone against their will implies bodily harm,” Walter argued.

He set his mouth in a grim line as he contemplated Butler’s threat. A woman forced into accepting an unwanted suitor was unlikely to have a happy marriage—and that was putting it mildly. A man who would force her hand when it came to a proposal probably wouldn’t respect her desires on other issues, either.

Before he could say more, though, they were interrupted by the arrival of both Frank and Ivy.

“Hetty? Are you ill?” her brother demanded. “Mr. Butler said you wanted us immediately?”

“Has something happened?” Ivy sounded anxious, as well she ought to be. She lifted her eyes up to meet Walter’s gaze. “Do you know what this is about?”

He made a quick decision. “I do, but I think an explanation might best come from Hester herself. I believe I ought to step out of the room and give you some privacy.”

“Yes, please.” Lady Hester had stopped trembling. She held her brother’s hand, her knuckles white with pressure. “I would appreciate that.”

Walter nodded and left her to explain the situation. Only after he walked away did he realize that he’d addressed Lady Hester by her given name alone, without her title. How presumptuous of him! She would think him no better than Butler.

And what was he going to do about Butler? Lady Hester was probably right that the bounder had not given her clear grounds for any kind of criminal action. It might be illegal for a man to coerce a woman into marrying him, but it would be difficult to prove that he’d threatened her. It would be her word against his. Since the man in this case was a respected clergyman, it might be hard to convince a judge that he was guilty of something so underhanded.

All the more reason why Walter needed to solve the embezzlement case, and soon. If Butler were really guilty, he must be stopped before he repeated his crime. And the more Walter learned about the man, the more possible it seemed that Butler might be the criminal Walter was looking for.

It was time, Walter decided, to go back to the Haworth Home and see for himself what Ernest Robinson had discovered. Ernest might very well have confidential information that he did not want to put in writing. And even if Ernest hadn’t learned anything, Walter could use him as a sounding board.

*

Fortunately, the weather cooperated with Walter’s travel plans. Though gray clouds covered the sky, the pending rain held off until after Walter reached the parsonage at the home. Ernest and Frederic were surprised to see him, but pleased.

After dinner, Walter followed Ernest into his study for a private conversation. Walter pulled an old leather armchair closer to his brother-in-law’s desk. He sat down, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. A gentleman’s study was supposed to smell of old books and tobacco, but this evening, the lattice window let in a light breeze from the outdoors. Walter drew in a deep breath of spring air.

Ernest seated himself behind his desk, but he leaned back in the chair and propped his feet up on top of the desk. Then he ran a hand through his short curls. Ernest came from quite a different background than the family he’d married into. His father had been English, but his mother had been a free woman of color from the French Antilles. Like many West Indian traders and plantation owners, Elias Robinson had sent his natural children to England to be educated. Ernest spoke and acted like any other member of the gentry class, but people in rural Somerset were sometimes prejudiced against him.

This prejudice had never stopped Ernest from doing his duty. Today, for instance, he did indeed have news for Walter. “I meant to write to you about my progress with the ledgers,” he explained, “but we had a nasty case of measles go through the home, and things were rather hectic.”

Walter stiffened in his chair. Measles was a killer, and it spread like lightning. “Did the orphanage lose any of the children?”

Ernest nodded. “An infant foundling and a three-year old. One of the older children seems to have lost his sight, but he will otherwise recover.” The bleakness of his tone hinted at how devastating these losses had been. “Unfortunately, the outbreak isn’t yet over. You had better not go up to the main building this visit.”

“Good Lord! I had no idea. I would not have burdened you with an unexpected guest if I’d any idea you were dealing with this.” Walter felt like kicking himself. Why hadn’t he simply written to Ernest with his questions?

Ernest sighed. “No one here is sick yet. Luckily, Freddy and I both had measles as children. We’ve been keeping Ned away from all the children, even the ones who seem healthy.” He grimaced. “Miss Miller thought we might as well let him catch the disease and get it over with, but he’s only just three years old, and we’d rather not risk it.”

“Of course not!” Walter was horrified at the thought of deliberately allowing a small child to catch a deadly disease. Did people do that? “Anyway, I can see you’ve got your hands full, so I’ll be out of here as soon as I can. I only wanted to know if you’d made any kind of progress studying the handwriting.”

To his surprise, Ernest nodded. “As a matter of fact, we did. I had Mr. Hunt up here. He teaches penmanship, you know, and someone told me he knew a fair bit about handwriting. He took a look at the ledgers, and—well, I might just as well show you.”

Ernest got up from his chair, walked over to the wall, and removed a handsome seascape in a gilt frame, revealing a wall safe. He unlocked it and took out a couple of ledgers. He brought the books over to Walter and opened one up in the middle.

“Take a look at the lines underlined in pencil,” he suggested.

Walter adjusted his glasses and obediently took a look. It took a moment for him to even find the underlining. On the left page, only one line had been underlined. On the right page, there were three.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” Walter asked. It was hard to read the writing at all, but one line appeared to list a payment for two dozen woolen socks. Another listed an order of potatoes. “Ah, I remember this one. It’s one of the earliest fraudulent charges, isn’t it?” He pointed to the potato’s entry.

That had been one of the first discrepancies Miss Miller noticed, and she’d only noticed it because she happened to be looking over expenses the day before Farmer Bright delivered two crates of potatoes. A chance conversation with the farmer revealed that he’d been charging the same price per pound for the last five years, which meant the entry in the ledger was wrong.

At first Miss Miller assumed the discrepancy between the actual price and the recorded price was due to some minor error. After she’d found several such “errors,” she’d gone to the board with the news that someone had falsified expense accounts for months.

“Yes. To be clear, not all the underlined expenses are fraudulent. But they’re all written in the same handwriting. And Mr. Hunt is certain it isn’t Mrs. Fairfax’s writing.”

A frisson of anticipation swept from Walter’s head to his feet. They were on the right track. He knew it. “Are all the fraudulent entries written in this hand, then?”

“That’s hard to tell. There are a few that are ambiguous. Hunt thinks the crook might have been testing out different styles of writing. Trying to make it hard to identify them by writing.”

Of course it had to be difficult, Walter thought bitterly. Nothing could ever be easy.

“So, can we eliminate Mrs. Fairfax from our list of suspects?” That would be some progress.

“Probably.” Ernest sighed again. “It’s theoretically possible that she knew about the theft, but winked at it or ignored it. But it looks like she wasn’t the one directly involved in falsifying the ledger entries.”

“I doubt she knew anything,” Walter guessed. “So, who does that leave us with? Is Neville Butler still a suspect?”

“We can’t rule him out.” Ernest frowned. “Hunt says he doesn’t have a good enough sample of his writing to tell either way.”

“You’d think there’d be any number of notes or letters from Butler still in the office,” Walter suggested.

“You most certainly would think that, wouldn’t you? But there’s almost nothing in his hand. Rather makes me wonder, to be honest.”

Ernest and Walter exchanged a look laden with meaning. Butler seemed to be an intelligent man. If he were the one embezzling money, he might have done his best to avoid leaving samples of his handwriting behind when he left the home.

Walter thought back to his interview with the curate. “Butler claims both Mrs. Johnson and Miss Eversley sometimes handled the accounts. Is that true?”

Ernest made a face. “Only very rarely. Mrs. Johnson’s writing is unmistakable. She always printed her entries in large, blocky letters. She doesn’t know how to write in cursive, so she can be ruled out. Miss Eversley is trickier. She has quite excellent writing—clear and readable. It doesn’t look much like the falsified entries, but of course, she could have been deliberately disguising her writing.”

“As could anyone.” Walter rested his head in his hands, momentarily overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task before them. “But I agree that it’s suspicious that Butler didn’t leave many samples of his handwriting behind. I’ll have to see if Frank—Lord Francis, I mean—has anything in his hand. Seems as if he ought to have something!”

Ernest’s face brightened. “That would be a great help.” He narrowed his eyes. “Something else bothering you, Walter?”

“Yessss.” Walter dragged out the word. He’d rather not admit this, but it might need to be said. “The problem is, I don’t think that I’m capable of being objective when it comes to Neville Butler. Not anymore.” He scowled as he recalled the look of panic he saw in Lady Hester’s eyes when he broke into the schoolroom and found her alone with Butler.

Ernest raised his eyebrows. “It sounds like there’s a story there,” he said cautiously. “Is it one you can tell?”

“I suppose I’d better.” Walter stared down at the open ledger as he explained his most recent encounters with Neville Butler, including the overheard discussion about dowries and church livings, as well as Butler’s attempt to compromise Lady Hester to force her to marry him. By the time he finished speaking, Ernest’s eyes had widened considerably.

“Good Heavens,” he said faintly. “He really is a knave, isn’t he?”

Walter nodded, but held his tongue. If he started saying what he really thought about Neville Butler, it might end in an incoherent stream of invective. That was how angry the man made him.

“That makes it seem all the more likely that he could be our thief, since he’s clearly capable of unethical behavior.” Ernest sounded almost hopeful.

“Yes, but that might also mean that we’re biased against him,” Walter pointed out. “Or at least I am. I’d like to have him thrown in Newgate for something. But I don’t want to let my anger cloud my judgment.” He had too much reason to want Butler to be found guilty.

“I do see the problem.” A wrinkle formed on Ernest’s brow, and he rested his head on his hand as he thought. “But of all the men I know, you are the least likely to indulge in a fit of bad temper.”

Walter smiled grimly. “Let’s hope it stays that way.” Though he normally prided himself on his rational thinking, he could not trust his temper when it came to Neville Butler.