by Jude Knight
On the evening of the fifth day, Philip arrived back at the inn just as a travelling coach pulled in. He’d passed it and was climbing the stairs when a familiar voice said, “Good day, my boy.”
Brigadier General Lord Henry Redepenning had just entered the main doors, a small, thin bespectacled man at his shoulder.
Philip turned, retracing his steps with his hand extended. “Uncle! What on earth are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you, too, Philip.” His uncle grinned.
“I’m delighted, of course. I just didn’t expect you to post all the way out here.”
“Thought I’d bring Wiggens.” He waved to his travelling companion. “Wiggens, my nephew.”
The little man was clutching a briefcase with one hand and a file folder with the other. He managed to bow with a degree of dignity. “A bad business, my l—Mr Daventry. A bad business.”
“Which we will not discuss in the public entrance of the inn,” Uncle Henry said. “What are the rooms like here, my boy?”
Philip escorted them in, saw them settled with rooms, and ordered a nice dinner to be served in a private parlour, where he met with his uncle a short while later.
Mr Wiggens was anxious to talk to Dr Wagley that very evening, but Philip insisted they wait to consult with Mrs Thorpe and her niece, and Uncle Henry supported him.
Over a dinner served by Uncle Henry’s own manservant, Philip questioned the two older men. Beyond a doubt, the rector had been sent funds intended for Aunt Hannah. And Uncle Henry also confirmed Philip’s estate had received no rentals since the steward disappeared five years ago. “It is a substantial sum, my boy,” Uncle Henry said. “Let’s hope we can recover some.”
The following morning, Philip escorted his uncle and the man of business on the two-mile walk to Aunt Hannah’s. Uncle Henry, country born and still a fit active man in his early sixties, thoroughly enjoyed the trek. The rain had cleared, and the mud had dried between the ruts so that, by stepping carefully, one could avoid the worst of the puddles.
Mr Wiggens regarded the hedgerows with suspicion, the sheep with distaste, and the cows with alarm.
“You are not accustomed to the country, Mr Wiggens,” Philip observed.
“I am a London man, sir. This place… the noises, the smells, the animals… How do people stand it?”
“Country people say the same when they come to London,” Uncle Henry said. “But you were here once before, Wiggens?”
“Yes, my lord, when I came down to—as I thought—put in place measures for Mrs Thorpe’s welfare. I blame myself, my lord. I blame myself very much. Had I not been so anxious to return to London… But a gentleman of the cloth, my lord, and so concerned for her, seemingly!”
“Yes, well, what’s done is done, Wiggens. Is this the place, Philip? But I have been here before! Visiting your great grandmother with your father, Philip. It is surely the estate’s dower house.”
In the thin winter sunshine, it looked better than it had on Philip’s first visit. The windows sparkled, cleaned inside and out, Lalamani had holystoned the front door slab and Philip had painted the front door a fresh green.
Philip had sent the pot boy ahead of them to warn the ladies of the visit, and morning tea was laid out in the parlour, where Aunt Hannah waited to preside over the tea pot, still in her faded black, but with a clean white fichu Lalamani had brought for her and a white lace cap decorated with pretty pink ribbons Philip had watched Lalamani making one afternoon while Mrs Thorpe slept.
“Lord Henry, this is such an honour. I do not know if you remember me, my lord, but I had the privilege of meeting you when you came here with the earl’s father. Back when you were at school, that would have been.”
“Indeed I remember,” Uncle Henry agreed, bowing over her hand. “You gave us a great slab of gingerbread each. I still remember how delicious it was.”
Aunt Hannah beamed. “Won’t you take a seat, my lord? And, Mr Wiggens, how very kind of you to come all this way. Please sit down, sir. How very delightful this is, to be sure. Why, I do not remember when I last had such visitors.”
Philip waited for her to get over her first fluster and to pour tea for Lalamani to carry to each of the guests. Once everyone was settled, he turned to Mr Wiggens. “Mr Wiggens, will you explain to Mrs Thorpe why we are here today?”
“Oh dear,” Mr Wiggens said. He put down his cup, pulled some papers out of his omnipresent briefcase, and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Mrs Thorpe, may I first say how very, very sorry I am.”
Aunt Hannah was bewildered. “Why, whatever can you mean, Mr Wiggens?”
Slowly, the story came out, with many interruptions and exclamations from Aunt Hannah. Wiggens had come to the village to make sure his client’s sister had a house to live in and an income to keep her comfortable for the rest of her life, as instructed by his client. “Your brother’s instructions were very clear, Mrs Thorpe.”
He’d found the village in some disarray even months after the epidemic that had carried off many, though mostly the elderly and the very young. The new rector had been in place a mere few weeks, and was working heroically. He much impressed Mr Wiggens with his commitment to returning order to the parish. Mrs Thorpe was sick, and—while past the crisis—in no fit state to hear business arrangements.
This, Mr Wiggens had from Dr Wagley and his sister, who assured Mr Wiggens that Mrs Thorpe had asked the Wagleys to take care of the matter for her.
“I never did! Oh, I never did.” Aunt Hannah held out her hand, and Lalamani clasped it. “Lalamani, dear, how could they have said such a thing?”
Mr Wiggens, anxious to escape the uncertain countryside for the safety of his beloved London, had accepted Dr Wagley’s offer to manage everything for Mrs Thorpe: the purchase of a house and the payment of a quarterly income sufficient to keep the admiral’s sister in comfort and to assure her of some of life’s elegancies. Here, Mr Wiggens cast a scornful glance around the room.
He had insisted on seeing Mrs Thorpe’s signature giving Dr Wagley power to act as her agent in all things. “This, ma’am, is the document Dr Wagley brought me. See, witnessed by Miss Wagley, and signed by you.”
Aunt Hannah shook her head. “No, Mr Wiggens. No, I did not sign that document. Why, that does not even look like my signature.” The ready tears were rolling down her cheeks again.
Lalamani perched on the arm of her aunt’s chair, all the better to hold the poor lady and pat her comfortingly.
“Oh, Lalamani, I cannot bear to believe it,” she wailed. After a few moments, she lifted her head and straightened her back. “I need to know, Mr Wiggens. Have you been paying money to Dr Wagley?”
“I have, ma’am. I have paid him the sum of three thousand four hundred pounds, at the rate of one hundred pounds per quarter. This does not include the money disbursed for the repairs and furnishing of this house.” Again, Mr Wiggens frowned at the shabby sofa and chairs. “A further sum, ma’am, of one hundred and seventy-two pounds when the house was first purchased, and sixty-five pounds three years ago.”
Aunt Hannah’s mouth opened and shut a few times as she clearly considered and rejected several words. Philip was a bit taken aback himself. Clearly, very little of the money had made its way to its rightful owner.
Finally, Aunt Hannah spoke. “Why, that fiend. He has not given me a tenth of that, Mr Wiggens, Lord Henry, and every penny has come with a sermon about how one should not be extravagant when living on the generosity of others. Why, Lalamani, he made me feel so guilty, and so grateful, and all the time it was my money.”
The tears were gone. The colour high in her cheeks, Aunt Hannah was fast working herself into a temper. “Why the evil, evil, lying thief. Evil to them who evil thinks, Lalamani, and so I trusted him and look what he had done. Stealing from me! When I think of all the people I could have helped. Why, Mrs Bascombe’s baby might be alive this very day had I money for the doctor, and I begged Dr Wagley, but he just shook his head and said
how sad it was.”
She could sit no longer, but was marching up and down the little parlour, her skirts swishing as she flicked them round at each end of the room. “As for that sister of his. Oh, if he is in it, she is too, you can be sure. ‘I would like to wear colours again,’ I said to her. ‘Do you forget your husband so easily?’ said she. ‘Those of us who were not blessed with the holy state of matrimony find that hard to understand. Many a widow would be grateful to have such good cloth to their back and many years of wear in it yet.’ All the time, it is my money that puts the clothes on her back, and so I’ll be bound.”
She came to a stop in front of Lord Henry. “You will put a stop to it, Lord Henry, will you not? Why, I should like to… I do not know what, indeed I do not, but it would be violent, beyond a doubt.”
Philip met Lalamani’s eyes, brimming with amusement at the sight of her plump little hen of an aunt ready for war. “This is the most animated I’ve seen her,” he murmured.
“Just think,” she whispered back, “I will never again have to listen to ‘But Dr Wagley says…’”
Lord Henry broke away from the conversation he and Mr Wiggens were having with Aunt Hannah to say, “Philip, we will head to the rectory immediately to confront the gentleman. You will come?”
“Of course, sir,” Philip agreed readily.
“I will not come,” Aunt Hannah said, decidedly, “for I would not be responsible for my actions, Lord Henry. But, Lalamani, you shall go in my stead. I trust you to remain calm, my dear, and to come back and tell me all about it. Now send in Addy, so I might tell her. Why, my dear, next quarter day, I will be able to pay Addy her wages and buy her a new dress! Just think!”
“I am authorised to pay you a sum immediately, ma’am,” Mr Wiggens assured her. “Even if my firm cannot recover the amount already disbursed, we cannot but feel responsible for your loss. I am authorised to pay you two hundred pounds pending further investigations.”
Lalamani left Addy ensconced in the other comfortable chair by the fire, holding her mistress’s hands, the two excitedly planning what they would do with the unbelievable wealth of two hundred pounds while Milly prepared them a fresh pot of tea.
Bless them. They had already, in their minds, outfitted the children of several local families with shoes against the cold and had cut back their own plans for a whole new wardrobe to accommodate a new dress for the eldest daughter of the Mrs Bascombe mentioned earlier. “For she has grown so much this last season, her skirts are up to her knees, and she cannot easily pin her bodice closed.
“I fear the boys have noticed already, and it may be a matter of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but there’s no use that villain preaching from the altar about girls being improperly dressed when the family does not have any way of buying cloth for a new dress. Oh, it makes me so wild, Addy, when I think of it. Why the she-fiend could have long since given the child one of the dresses that I paid for.”
Lalamani closed the door on the rest of the conversation and joined the three men where they waited for her in the porch.
At the rectory, they surprised Dr Wagley crossing from the house to the church. He stopped to let them catch up, his eyes wary behind his spectacles.
“Dr Wagley? I am Brigadier General Lord Henry Redepenning. Mr Wiggens I think you know. And, of course, my nephew and Miss Finchurch. We wish to have a word with you.”
Dr Wagley started walking again, saying over his shoulder, “It will have to wait, sir. I am on my way to God’s house for my daily devotions.”
Philip moved to block him, while Lord Henry stopped him with, “Halt!” After that parade-ground bark, the Brigadier General dropped his voice to a low growl. “You, Dr Wagley, have some explanations to make, and we will hear them now.”
Dr Wagley, his gaze darting from person to person, hesitated on the path. Suddenly, he rounded on Lalamani. “What are you doing here? You’re not part of this. You shouldn’t be here.”
Lalamani took a step back in alarm. The man was almost foaming at the mouth, his pale eyes protruding from his head in the force of his anger.
Philip stepped beside her, placing his shoulder before her as if he feared a physical attack. Indeed, the rector seemed ready to explode, until Lord Henry said sharply, “That will be quite enough, sirrah. Miss Finchurch is here to represent her uncle’s wishes and her aunt’s interests.”
Dr Wagley turned his wrathful eyes on the older man. “She is a woman, sir. She should be silent and obedient. At her age, she should be married and have several children, not traipsing all over the countryside with an…” he nearly spat the next word, “engineer.”
“Enough!” Lord Henry’s battle-field roar silenced the fulminating rector mid-rant.
With several resentful glances at Lalamani, and defiantly proud glares at the men, he led the way to his study. He denied nothing, but insisted he was on the Lord’s work and was therefore above mere human rules. “Mrs Thorpe would only have frittered the money away. What was her brother thinking, leaving such a legacy to a woman? Ridiculous. I have made much better use of it. Why, I reroofed the church. I put up a new wall to stop cows grazing in the church yard. I paid for building the extension to the workhouse.”
“Correction,” Lord Henry said, in a deceptively mild tone. “Mrs Thorpe paid for those things. And you gave her no choice in the matter.”
Lalamani, who had been examining the rich furnishings in the rector’s study, asked, “How much of Mrs Thorpe’s income did you spend on furnishing the rectory, Dr Wagley? And on clothing for you and Miss Wagley?”
The rector glared at her, but made no reply.
“Mr Wiggens will examine your financial records,” Lord Henry declared.
“He will also be looking for the rents collected from Lord Calne’s tenants,” Philip added.
“Those rents are nothing to do with you,” Wagley hissed. “I collected them on behalf of the Earl of Calne.”
“Yet the earl’s man of business has no record of their receipt,” Lord Henry said. “I examined the books myself.”
“How dare you!” Wagley was dancing in his rage. “You are interfering without right or justice. I shall complain to the Bishop. I shall complain to the earl.”
Philip, who had remained seating while the rector stood to better express his fury, was forming a peak with the fingers of both hands, his gaze intent on pushing his deformed fingers into place. “I asked my uncle to investigate, and he did so on my authority.” He shot a piercing glance at Wagley over his steepled hands. “As is my right and duty, as Earl of Calne.”
Wagley froze, then broke into a frenzied diatribe about deceit and his duty to rescue the earldom’s funds from a profligate who would only waste them on riotous living.
Eventually, Lord Henry shouted him into silence, and Wagley sullenly produced a tidy set of ledgers in which every expenditure had been meticulously recorded. “Scripture says, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth the corn,’” he declared, “and again, ‘A workman is worthy of his hire.’”
Despite his quotations of Scripture, the records in his own handwriting were damning, every receipt and expenditure meticulously detailed. Even the sceptical squire, sent for to officiate in his role as local magistrate, could not deny the evidence. Wagley and his sister were taken into custody, pending further examination.
Aunt Hannah was pleased to know the rector had salted away much of what he had stolen from her in savings and investments. It would take time, but Mr Wiggens thought he should be able to recover at least half of the purloined funds. “Your rentals, too, my lord,” he assured Philip.
Chapter Ten
The Wagley’s larceny was the wonder of the village, but it was overshadowed by the discovery that Mr Philip Daventry, the quiet-spoken engineer with the ready smile, was really the new Earl of Calne.
Lalamani informed Philip that the poorer villagers were happy to overlook the deception. Aunt Hannah’s supporters deduced he had disguised h
imself at the service of catching out “that there Dr Wagley and his sister, and a good thing, too.” Lord Calne was their hero, not least once the rectory maid spread the news his tenants’ rentals had been stolen by the unloved pair.
She left unexpressed their expectation that Lord Calne would now stay and resolve all their ills, but Philip could read between the lines.
And he could. With the rents he would start to receive next quarter day, even if he reduced them to a level more in keeping with his tenant’s ability to pay, and with the money from the earldom’s other properties he had already ordered sold, he would be able to arrange part payments to the hovering creditors with the promise of the rest in quarterly payments over time. Better yet, Wagley’s accounting book recorded investments and savings, some of which should come back to Philip once the courts had finished their slow work.
Meanwhile, the weight of villagers’ hopes was in every look he received in the lanes, every curtsy or bow, or hand offered for him to shake.
The gentry, particularly those who had ignored the lowly engineer, were more inclined to take offence at his impersonation. Even those fathers and brothers of would-be countesses, sent to the inn to make Lord Calne’s acquaintance, usually managed to work in an assurance they alone, of all the locals, would have kept Lord Calne’s secret and assisted him in unmasking the villain.
The day after the confrontation, he and Lord Henry saw the Wagleys off to Horsham to await the assizes, escorted by a brace of constables, and Mr Wiggens onto the mail coach that would return him to the safety of London.
Lord Henry would leave the next day, going directly to his nephew’s house in West Gloucestershire, where his family was gathering for Christmas. “You are welcome to join us, Philip, of course,” he offered, as they strolled back to the inn after an afternoon visit to Aunt Hannah’s house, “but I will not press you if you prefer to spend Christmas with your lady.”