Once Before (The Hero Next Door Series Book 3)

by Rebecca King

  ‘But surely, if you suspected the foreman might be involved you could have just fired him, ordered him out of the premises and contacted the magistrate,’ Tabitha reasoned. ‘Why did you allow him to keep going into the factory if you thought he was stealing?’

  ‘Because I needed proof I could take to the magistrate. Besides, it is better to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. By employing the foreman, I was able to see who his friends were, watch what he did, and check the entries he put into the ledgers.’

  ‘But you still couldn’t prove he was involved,’ Tabitha murmured.

  ‘Then I received a note informing me that I had been seen doing despicable things to someone, a young boy,’ Reynold paled. He handed Daniel the note in question and slid a worried look at Tabitha. ‘It shook me, I can tell you. It made me panic because I had to wonder if this was the wicked rumour Lynchgate had spread to my customers to get them to stop trading with me. It prompted me to do more to catch the bastard responsible, especially given that it was likely they were going to attack me again.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘They wouldn’t allow you to escape the second time they assaulted you. They would make sure that they did a better job.’

  ‘I know. So, I sat down and tried to come up with different ways of solving this problem. I went to see the magistrate but he said that he couldn’t arrest the entire damned factory and until I could find proof that Lynchgate wasn’t just a businessman, or that the foreman was the one who put the wrong figures into the ledger, or caught the thieves making out of the factory with stolen skeins of cotton, there wasn’t anything he could do. It was then that I received another of those vile notes.’ Reynold pointed to it, his lip curling in distaste. ‘Because I had no help from the magistrate, I made a few discrete enquiries around town to find out if Lynchgate was in contact with Tabitha. I wondered if she was the person who had pointed him in my direction or alerted him to the fact that I owned a very lucrative business in town.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to my father for years,’ Tabitha protested. ‘I didn’t even realise he was in the area until he turned up at my front door the same day as Daniel and his men.’

  ‘Everyone I asked told me that you hadn’t had any contact with your father for a long time and weren’t likely to have seeing as you didn’t like him,’ Reynold said. ‘I was confident that you hadn’t drawn Lynchgate to the area and pointed him in the direction of my factory. What I do know is that the man tried to get my customers to cancel orders to try to financially damage me in the hope that I would sell Lynchgate shares in the business. When I refused, he turned his thugs on me and sent the notes to scare me into feeling vulnerable. Without proof, and with the foreman thieving, I knew I had to do something drastic. There was nowhere to turn. It was then that I decided that I had to pretend to die. My cousin is an estimable doctor and owed me a favour or two, so I explained to him what had been happening and showed him the notes. He agreed to forge my fake death certificate in the hopes of luring out the cretin responsible for the problems I was facing. I then set about duplicating the title deeds to this house another friend of mine has let me borrow. He doesn’t like living out here because it is too isolated. It has hardly been occupied for the last several years, so he had no qualms allowing me to use it.’

  ‘It isn’t yours to bequeath to anybody?’ Daniel interrupted.

  ‘I am afraid not, which is why I couldn’t leave the deeds with the solicitor. If I had he would have had to legally alert the authorities to the change of ownership, which is something I couldn’t allow him to do because I don’t legitimately own it.’ He threw Tabitha an apologetic look. ‘I am sorry, my dear, for being so cruel.’

  Tabitha wanted to cry. ‘Is it for sale?’

  Reynold sighed. ‘We shall get back to that in a while. For now, I will continue.’

  ‘Please do,’ Daniel murmured dryly.

  ‘I left some money in my old bank account for Miss Lynchgate to ‘inherit’, and wrote a will bequeathing the factory to her. It is compensation for making you believe that all of this was real.’

  ‘Why would you risk the factory? How did you know that he wouldn’t just command her to hand it over and she would without arguing with him?’

  ‘Because I knew by that time that their relationship was acrimonious. Besides, she was old enough to be an independent young lady and unlikely to allow her father to command her to do anything. If she had been one and twenty, I wouldn’t have done it, but at nine and twenty she is mature enough to stand her ground against the likes of Lynchgate,’ Reynold explained. ‘It was a risk, but one well worth taking not least because her inheritance would become null and void the second I appeared alive and well. The factory is mine up to the point I truly do die, or legitimately and willingly sell it. If I had bequeathed the factory to any of my family, and I do have a family by the way, they would have been Lynchgate’s target and would have faced the same problems as me. I couldn’t put anybody in that situation. I had to leave it with someone I knew couldn’t run it. If I had closed the factory, my customers would have found other suppliers elsewhere on a permanent basis and I would have ruined my own business anyway. Some suppliers have probably already left me for good. Others may wait to find out what you intend to do with the factory before they decide if they need to find a new supplier. I intended for all of this to be resolved by then.’

  ‘If it wasn’t resolved before the business was irreparably damaged then you had to reappear to retake control of it,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Exactly. By leaving it with Tabitha, it bought me time and kept my customers in suspense. It didn’t close any doors. Customers, and the workers, are all waiting to see what she chooses to do. I had to leave you the keys in the hopes that you would be curious enough to try to find out what was going on.’

  ‘With the keys we found two sets of cufflinks and a fob watch. Why were they left with the keys? What’s the relevance?’ Tabitha asked.

  ‘I had to leave you the cufflinks and fob watch because they are the kind of personal possessions most men leave behind when they die. Every man owns a pair of cufflinks and a fob watch. It would have been odd had you not inherited any items like it from me as you inherited all my personal belongings. I had to leave you something to make the inheritance look legitimate,’ Reynold replied.

  ‘You have the box of personal belongings the foreman took to the factory, don’t you?’ Daniel demanded.

  Reynold nodded. ‘The foreman put it into my office. I went in there one night, before the solicitor changed the locks, and removed it. Because the factory was closed nobody noticed it had gone.’

  ‘Well, the Star Elite have started to investigate Lynchgate as well,’ Daniel informed him. ‘We do know that Lynchgate has a relative who is a judge, Judge Sminter, who has recently given two thugs very lenient sentences. It is suspected that Lynchgate has also stolen money from the workhouse in Marlton he is a Governor of, so we may be able to find proof that the man is a thief. We were asked to investigate the workhouse thefts but followed the main suspect’s trail here. We then learnt that Lynchgate had connections to your factory and that you had been found dead. The Star Elite came to find out if you killed yourself or you were murdered, and the death was staged to look like you had taken your own life.’

  ‘It is why Daniel and his men are here,’ Tabitha interrupted.

  ‘So, the Star Elite are investigating Lynchgate.’ Reynold looked incredibly relieved. ‘It sounds as if Lynchgate has thugs in his employ who are not averse to attacking people.’

  ‘We know they aren’t.’ Daniel told them about the night he had stupidly taken Tabitha to the factory. ‘We didn’t know at the time that you had staged your death.’

  ‘You do know that the foreman is now dead, don’t you?’

  Reynold nodded. ‘It wasn’t me before you ask. I think he might have been killed because he knew too much.’

  ‘That was you in that stock room that night, wasn’t it?’ Tabitha whispe
red. ‘You walked straight past me.’

  Reynold nodded. ‘I had been going through the papers in the foreman’s office, trying to find any clues about who he was working for.’

  ‘But you didn’t find anything,’ Daniel stated.

  Reynold shook his head. ‘I was interrupted by a rather pretty young lady who worried me because she appeared to be in the factory all alone.’

  ‘I was with him,’ Tabitha assured him with a nod at Daniel, who lifted his brows, a little unsure how he felt about being called ‘him’.

  ‘And where were you, may I ask?’ Reynold demanded as if unimpressed that Daniel should be foolish enough to leave her all alone.

  ‘Chasing after the thugs who had broken into the factory,’ Daniel retorted succinctly.

  Reynold nodded. ‘I waited around to make sure that nobody accosted her and left when your friends turned up, Daniel.’

  ‘Have you been back since?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘I have and know that you removed a lot of the paperwork, and the notes and keys I left you,’ Reynold murmured, his gaze sliding to Tabitha. ‘It is my factory. All I had to do was wait for you to go to Mr Rumpton. I had to leave the most important papers at the bank. It would be a damned fool indeed who tried to break in there.’

  ‘The solicitor you hired?’ Daniel asked. ‘Is he in on your ruse?’

  Reynold snorted. ‘No. I couldn’t instruct our family solicitor to go along with the pretence that I had sold or handed ownership of the factory over to someone; he would have a conniption. I used a local man who had a reputation for not being the best and therefore unlikely to ask too many questions.’

  ‘How did you go about faking your own death?’ Tabitha asked.

  ‘Like I said, I persuaded a doctor friend of mine who works in the area to falsify a death certificate. I know it is illegal, but I had no choice. I had to do something because someone wanted me dead. I had planned to put everything into motion the week after the assault but then I was attacked again at my desk. One night, many hours after the factory had closed and the workers had gone home, I was in my office poring through the ledgers, checking the figures to try to establish how long the thefts had been happening for. Everything was quiet. I don’t know if someone had been in my office for a while or crept in when I wasn’t looking. Suddenly, a ligature was dropped around my neck and pulled so tightly that I was pressed back against my chair. I struggled and kicked, but couldn’t get enough air in. The world was going dark when I forced myself to stand up. I grabbed the desk for support and as I stood used the back of my legs to ram the chair into the attacker’s body. It made him release me long enough for me to pick up the candelabra and throw it at him. The man ran for his life when the tables were turned. When I stepped onto the factory floor, though, it was too dark and too dangerous, so I returned to my office, gathered my belongings and the ledgers and found a place to hide until morning. It was then I realised that I couldn’t wait any longer to put my supposed death into action. The following day, I arrived for work and went through my normal routine. At lunchtime, I began to put on a show of my life and did my best to pretend that I had something weighing on my mind. I did, really, and didn’t have to work too hard to pretend I was worried. The threats were real, not fakes, or designed to just worry me. The person or people who sent them meant every word. I had someone who wanted me dead. Of course, I was able to hide the bruising around my throat with my cravat and shirt, but the pain was still there whenever I swallowed. It was a constant reminder that I had to go through with my plans because I didn’t doubt that when they attacked me for a third time they would succeed. But even with everything planned in meticulous detail, I had doubts about what I was doing. But I waited until everyone had gone home. I then shot a gun out of the window just in case anybody was nearby and could hear and then disappeared into the night.’

  ‘But the foreman found your body,’ Daniel snapped. ‘This is balderdash.’

  ‘No. The foreman wasn’t the one who found my body. The young man who claimed to have found me is the honest and decent worker who did the stock checks for me, a man called Charles – Charlie - Remner. He got several workers to help him; workers he knew he could trust to keep quiet about the thefts and the fact that I wasn’t really dead. While I was still alive they watched everything the foreman did and kept reporting back to me, tipping me off when he did something strange – like stack one of the cotton skeins against the corner of the stock room rather than leave it on the floor where it should be. That skein was then fetched late at night when the foreman was alone. He was often the last one in the factory, and often stole the skeins on the days that I left before him.’

  ‘So he knew that there was nobody around to watch him,’ Daniel mused. ‘But from the sound of it he was stealing a skein to sell. How can this involve Lynchgate?’

  ‘Because the foreman, Ian Garner, didn’t sell them. He handed them to thugs, and I say them because the foreman set several skeins aside to hand to the thugs who took them away.’

  ‘So you got Charlie to claim that he had found your body,’ Daniel muttered in disgust.

  ‘Yes. He supposedly found it when he arrived for work that morning, earlier than he usually did, I will grant you. He ran for the doctor, having made his grisly discovery, and fetched my friend, who declared I had killed myself and arranged for my ‘body’ to be taken away for further examination right there and then. My doctor friend stayed with my ‘body’ to make sure that nobody tampered with the ‘evidence.’

  Daniel shook his head in disbelief. ‘Didn’t the workers find it suspicious that there wasn’t a body to remove from the factory?’

  Reynold grinned. ‘But there was. It was Charlie’s twin brother. He was paid handsomely to pretend to be dead, covered over, and carried out of the factory, escorted by my good friend, the doctor. It was all very ingenious, don’t you think?’

  He looked like a naughty child who had just been caught hiding something he knew he shouldn’t have. Tabitha shook her head chidingly at him, unsure if she should believe him or not. Nevertheless, she was prepared to keep listening, not least because she was intrigued. Besides, the more she looked for holes in his story the less she was able to find them.

  ‘I paid Charlie and his brother handsomely. Charlie wanted to keep his job and, like I have said, didn’t like the foreman either and wanted him out of the factory. His family has worked at my factory for years and were angry that it was experiencing damage, and everyone might lose their jobs because of Ian Garnet.’

  Tabitha looked questioning at Daniel.

  ‘The foreman,’ he whispered to her before turning to Reynold. ‘Charlie helped you despite knowing that you were going to temporarily put him out of work.’

  Reynold grinned. ‘I have been paying him, his brother, his family, his cousins, and the rest of the workers who have helped keep an eye in Garnet throughout all of it in return for their help. They haven’t suffered or been put in any danger.’

  ‘How do you know the workers haven’t killed Garnet to get rid of him?’ Tabitha asked.

  Reynold looked sadly at her, as if disappointed that she didn’t understand the workforce. ‘Because they helped me protect their jobs. They wouldn’t kill to get rid of the foreman and then lose their jobs, their homes, their freedom. You have to understand that the factory is more of a community. I pay the workers well and do what I can to make sure they receive fair pay for a fair day’s work.’

  ‘But we heard that your workers were angry that you hadn’t repaired broken machinery,’ Daniel said.

  ‘You were misinformed. I have a forge and a very good blacksmith on site who can make practically anything,’ Reynold assured him. ‘You can ask him if you like.’

  ‘That faulty machinery story sounds like another one of Lynchgate’s lies,’ Tabitha murmured. ‘He may have spread that particular rumour to give your customers the impression that your cotton was being produced by inferior machinery ergo would probably be inferior in qu
ality.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Daniel snorted.

  Reynold pursed his lips and smiled. ‘You are a very logical young lady. That does sound like something Lynchgate would do, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It would impact your business,’ Tabitha said.

  ‘Well word has spread because it was in our brief,’ Daniel remarked.

  ‘Some of my most trusted employees have been helping me. While they haven’t visited me here, they have been keeping me informed about what they have seen going on in the factory while it is closed. They live very close to it and can practically see it from their front room windows. Some have watched anybody who has been near the place. I understand from them that Garnet goes in there quite frequently – or he did until you boarded the place up.’

  ‘Has more stock disappeared since you died?’

  Reynold nodded. ‘Until Garnet was murdered. It was a shock to find him sitting at my desk, as stiff as a board, I can tell you.’