“I do.”
“Then you will direct your request to me, Mr Tull. The apparatus and the tower are property of the trust, and I am its custodian.”
Tull studied her with the frank assessment of a man who had dealt with obstructive landowners since before she was born. “With respect, Miss Bennet, the harbour authority’s jurisdiction over navigational aids is not contingent upon trust law.”
“No, it is not. But the manner and timing of any inspection is a matter I may reasonably discuss, particularly given that the keeper has identified the fault and a remedy is already in progress.” She sipped from the cup. “I should not wish your report to reflect an incomplete picture.”
Tom Calder, who had been watching this exchange with open fascination, sidled closer to Robson’s son and murmured, in a voice perhaps louder than he intended, “Who isshe?”
“The steward,” Joseph muttered back. “Hush, I want to hear.”
“Aye, I heard. But whoisshe? She’s bonny, whoever she is.”
The keeper did not look at Tom. He did not need to.
Tull replaced his hat. “I’ll inspect today, Miss Bennet. That is not negotiable. But I’ll hear your account first, if you’ve a mind to give it.”
“I have. Shall we go up? The keeper can show you the collar directly. I examined it myself yesterday evening, and the wear is quite visible once you knowwhere to look.”
He kept his face entirely neutral. She had not examined the collar. She had not even been shown the collar. She had stood in the lantern room and watched the flame die and asked him what was wrong, and he had given her no answer beyond the fact that he did not have one. And now she was offering to show the harbour warden evidence of a fault she had never seen, in a mechanism she could not yet name the parts of, with a confidence that bordered on reckless.
She did not look at him. She was already leading Tull toward the door.
They climbed in single file—Miss Bennet first, then Tull, then the keeper, then the clerk clutching his leather case against the narrow walls. The stair delivered them into the lantern room, and Tull went straight to the housing with the familiarity of a man who had inspected this apparatus more than once.
He ran his hand along the lens mounting. He tested the gallery glass. He examined the oil reservoir, the wick cradle, the vent assembly. He opened the draft plate and peered through it. He did all of this in silence, with the methodical attention of someone assembling a verdict.
“Oil is sound,” he said. “Wick is good. Vents are clear.” He turned to the collar. “This is the piece?”
“It is,” the keeper said. He lifted the collar from the housing and held it for Tull to examine. “The bore has opened along the southern quarter. The collar no longer seats flush against the housing. When the flame rises, it draws unevenly—heats one side of the wick, chars it before the oil feeds properly, and the light cannot sustain.”
Tull took the collar and turned it in his hands. He held it to the light from the gallery panes. He ran his thumb along the interior bore with the slow attention of a man who had handled brass fittings for forty years.
“I cannot see it,” Tull said.
“It is subtle,” Miss Bennet said from behind them both. “But if you seat the collar against the housing and turn it, you can feel the play on the southern quarter. The keeper showed me last evening. I confess I did not perceive it at first either, but once you know what you are looking for, it is quite distinct.”
She said it with the easy authority of someone reporting an observation she had made with her own hands. Not defensive. Not insistent. The tone of a woman who assumed the man before her was perfectly capable of finding what she had found, once directed.
Tull fitted the collar into the housing. He turned it. He turned it again, slower.
The keeper watched him and did not breathe. The collar was true. It seated without play. There was nothing to feel, because there was nothing wrong with it, and Tull had forty years of brass work in his hands and would know a sound collar from a worn one the way a horseman knows a sound hoof from a lame.
Tull’s thumb paused on the southern quarter.
“Aye,” he said. “Aye, there’s a hair of movement there. You’d not catch it without looking for it.” He pulled the collar free and held it up, squinting along the bore. “The foundry stamp—Heaton’s?”
“The original commissioning, yes. I have written to them for the replacement.”
Tull handed the collar back. He looked at the mechanism once more—at the clean glass, the trimmed wick, the polished brass—and whatever he was thinking, he kept it behind the same impassive expression he had worn since he arrived. He turned to his clerk.
“Collar wear identified on the primary housing. Southern quarter. Replacement ordered from original foundry.” He looked at the keeper. “How long?”
“Three weeks. Perhaps four.”
“You’ll burn the pyre until then?”
“Every night.”
