The Paralyzed Duke’s Horse Called Him a Liar—Only I Could Hear It

Chapter 10

The second letter was worse than the first.

It was written in a small neat hand, with numbers in the margins and dates underlined twice, and it laid out the fraud the way a surveyor lays out a field — patiently, with stakes and string, so that any fool who came after could see exactly where the boundary had been moved.

A third valuation was filed in February for the northern parcels, signed with your name and sealed with your ring. The ring was on your hand in Northumberland; I have the innkeeper’s book to prove the date. The valuer is a harness maker in Welby named Gidley, a frightened man with a red face and bad debts, who signs whatever is put in front of him and drinks about it afterwards. He can be found at the wool exchange on market days. Handle him gently; he is not evil, only weak, which in this county is more dangerous.

The money went to Harrowmere shares in your name. Cawthorne holds them as your proxy. The proxy document bears your signature. The signature is very good, Rowan. It is so good that I sat with it for an hour before I understood what was wrong, and what is wrong is this: whoever copied your hand has seen you write under stress. The letters lean as yours do when the pen is hurrying, and you only hurry when you are angry.

Rowan stopped reading and sat very still in his chair.

“Under stress,” he said.

“Yes.”

“A man in my own house, then. A man who has watched me sign things while I was angry. A man who has stood at my elbow while I signed warrants, contracts, leases, and bills.”

“There are a great many men who do that.”

“No,” he said. “There are not.”

He unfolded the ledger page and laid it flat on the saddle bench where the lantern light fell best. It was one column of a page torn from an account book, written in a household hand — the kind of small, disciplined script that keeps an estate’s pantry accounts and never once looks beautiful.

Three lines, one for each payment. And beside each payment, the same note.

To P. — doors, keys, hours, and the day-book — £40.

“P,” I said.

“Mr. Prine,” said the Duke.

The name landed in the stable like a dropped horseshoe. Mr. Prine was the steward of Ravensmoor Hall: a small, tidy, grey-moustached man who had been in the house since before Rowan’s father died, who kept the keys on a brass ring at his waist, who knew which doors stuck in wet weather, who knew the Duke’s hours better than anyone alive — when he sat, when he tired, when he slept, when the household could be safely out of the way.

“He taught me to ride,” said the Duke.

“He may be innocent. Someone else’s initial.”

“He keeps the day-book. He is the only man in this house who writes in it.” He pressed his knuckles against his mouth and stared at the page, and I could see him going back through three months of memory, three months of a chair and a rug and a stranger’s patience, hunting for the face of the man who had handed his secrets over for forty pounds a time. “Three payments. He was paid to keep doors unlocked and to tell them when I was alone. That is all the fire needed. A door left open, a night when the dogs were inside, a couple of hours.”

“Then he is a witness, not a killer.”

“He is a witness,” said the Duke, “if he lives long enough to be asked.”

Cinder’s thought came from the stall, low and unsentimental.

Catch the lemon man first. Then the old one with the keys will talk. Men with keys talk when they are frightened of what they sold.

“Your horse advises catching Corbin first,” I said.

“Naturally. He has been waiting three months to bite someone.”

The Duke looked at the letters, the ledger page, the brass token lying dull in the lantern light. I watched him do the arithmetic that every wronged man has to do at two in the morning: what can be proven, what can only be known, what can be said out loud, and who will believe it.

“Legally,” he said, “this is enough to stop the transfer and force an audit. It is not enough to hang anyone for murder. If I take it to the magistrate tomorrow, Corbin will be questioned, will deny everything, will produce the money trail as a mistake, and will have three months to destroy whatever else exists. And Mr. Prine will receive a letter from London and will be found in his bed with a bad heart.”

“A man’s heart can be arranged,” I said.

“So can a rope on a north lane.”

The lantern guttered. Outside, the wind moved through the yard and stirred the smell of burnt straw, and I thought about Adeline Thorne riding to London with a packet under her saddle and a wheel waiting for her on the road home.

“Then we do not take it to the magistrate,” I said. “Not yet. We make them expose themselves, in front of witnesses, with their hands on the paper.”

“At the tenants’ race.”

“You cancelled it after the accident. Corbin urges you to revive it — he wants to look benevolent, and he wants the county to see you being carried to a chair like a relic.” I took a breath. “Bring it back. Announce it in the breakfast room. Let him believe the idea is his, because men like him trust a plan more when they have stolen it. Then he has to be there, in public, with Cawthorne, with the folder, with everyone watching — and you refuse the signature in front of the whole county.”

The Duke was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “You have thought about this a great deal.”

“I have lain awake in that attic thinking about nothing else for two weeks, your grace. And I have been paid to read horses my whole life. The one thing I know about a plan involving a horse is that the horse will improve it.”

“Improve it how?”

“Cinder has opinions about your cousin.”

“Naturally.”

From the stall came a whicker and a thought, delivered with enormous dignity.

Carrots. And the countess’s gray mare should be there. She notices things and she dislikes him. Two witnesses are better than one. Also dignity.

“Cinder requests carrots and dignity,” I said.

“Does he.”

“Mostly carrots.”

The Duke almost laughed. I watched him catch it and hold it, because laughing had become a dangerous kind of arithmetic for him too — every honest sound in that house was something to be weighed, something that could be stolen and used.

Then he folded the second letter flat and slipped it into his coat, and took up the last item from the oilskin: the third letter, still folded, still sealed with a wafer of red wax that had never been broken.

And on the outside flap, in his sister’s hurried, slanting hand, was a line of writing that was not addressed to him at all.

Not for you, brother. For the one who listens.

I felt my scalp tighten.

“Two years,” said the Duke quietly. “I have carried this in the packet since it was found. I did not know who it was meant for. I did not know there was anyone in the world who answered to that.”

I looked at the words. And somewhere behind my ribs, a memory that had been standing quietly in a corner of my mind for four summers took one step forward and said its name out loud.

I had heard that word before. I had heard it spoken by a lady in a green traveling cloak, in the Calloway stableyard, while a bay mare tried to climb out of her own skin at the sight of the Barrowfield bridge.