“How many, would you say?” the captain said, lifting his pencil from the notebook where he was recording interesting details.
“Not so many as at Pickering, I should say, although I did not count them.”
“So he continued to add to his collection after that point. How did you think he acquired such a treasure trove?”
“Not from saving his pennies, that much is certain!” she said, laughing.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know to a nicety what he was paid as chaplain, and what Mama's portion was.” When the captain looked at her quizzically, she shrugged and said, “I used to look around Uncle Charles’s study, too. I never got into his safe, but he had a drawer labelled‘Important papers’, so I looked in there.”
The captain laughed. “If only everyone were so helpful as to label drawers in that manner. It would make snooping so much easier. So how do you think your father made all that money that became gold bars?”
She frowned a little, for it was a question that bothered her, if she were honest. But she gave the explanation she had settled on years ago. “He used to win at cards a great deal, especially when he played piquet against Grandfather late at night — five or ten or even twenty pounds, so that would add up, would it not?”
“Even small amounts would add up, over time,” the captain said. “If he made five pounds in a night, and repeated the feat every week, say, then… let me see, the late earl died ten years ago, so over twenty years… hmm, that would be five thousand pounds. Assuming he did not spend his winnings.”
“He never spent a penny of his own money if he could help it, and if it were ten pounds, three times a week…?”
“Hmm. Thirty thousand. Even so, it seems a great deal just from cards. Is there any other way you can think of that he might have accumulated so much money?”
“His businesses in Pickering?”
“A chandlery and an ironmongery. We will look into them, of course, but it seems unlikely that they would be quite so profitable, and if he had any other businesses, we have yet to hear of them.”
“A haberdashery,” Mr Willerton-Forbes said. “There was talk of a haberdashery.”
“So there was. But that could not have been so profitable, either. Let us be generous and suppose he made twenty thousand from cards, over the years. That still leaves twenty thousand to account for.”
“Perhaps he was involved with the smugglers,” Tess said, laughing.
“Is there smuggling here, so far from the coast?” Captain Edgerton said, blandly, but Tess had a feeling he knew more than he was saying.
“There is smuggling everywhere,” she said. “The goods may come in at the coast, but they get distributed far beyond that.”
Captain Edgerton nodded, and scribbled away in his notebook, and Tess hoped she had deflected him from further enquiry. She did not know precisely how her father had acquired so much money, but he could not have come by it honestly, on that point she was certain.
When he looked up from his writing, he said, “Tell me about Shapman’s confession.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“He never talked about it to you? It was not, perhaps, your suggestion?”
“No!I would never have—! And I know he did not do it, so why would I—? No! But I think it was my letter that set him off. When I heard you were at Pickering, looking into my father’s affairs there, I panicked a bit, in case you found my fortune.” She lifted one shoulder with a sigh. “Well, you found it anyway, but I wrote to Tom and said I wished there were some way to stop your investigations, and Tom took me at my word. But I had no idea of any confession beforehand. I was shocked when I heard.”
“But you must have talked to him about the murder. You walked into Birchall regularly, I understand, so—?”
“What does that have to say to anything?” she said sharply.
Captain Edgerton smiled. “I mean no censure, I assure you. What you do or who you see is not my concern. I am only interested in Shapman’s confession, for I have to tell you, it was very convincing, and it puzzles me how he got all that information. I wondered if perhaps he had discussed with you how the murder might have been done.”
“Oh… I am not sure… there was only one time…” She frowned, trying to recall the occasion. “He said it must have been a madman, someone who just broke in through the window in the scullery with the broken latch, then wandered about here and there, picking up the axe on the stairs and entering my father’s room by sheer chance. But I said it could not be so.”
“Yes?” the captain said encouragingly, when she paused.
“I thought it was all planned.”
“What makes you think so?”
