Read Chapter 26: The Cousin's Safety

Graves had not slept. The clock on Ashworth’s mantel read half past six in the morning, and the fire in the grate had burned down to a sullen orange glow. Clara sat in the corner armchair, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on the list of twenty-three names that lay open on the low table between them.

“Lord Wrexham,” she said quietly, tapping a finger against the fifth entry. “He was kind to my father. Lent him money when the business failed. Never asked for it back.”

Graves nodded. He had memorised every name by now—tradesmen, minor lords, a retired naval captain, two widows, a barrister, and Ashworth’s cousin, who was first on the list. The date beside the cousin’s name was four days hence. Finch had moved him to the top, no doubt as a message.

Ashworth entered without ceremony, a leather coat over his shoulders and a fresh bruise darkening his jaw from the skirmish at Henley Court. He did not apologise for the hour. He was already reaching for a silver whistle on the mantelpiece, turning it over in his fingers.

“My cousin arrives at Paddington at eleven,” Ashworth said. “I’ve arranged for a closed carriage to meet him. He’ll be taken to a property I own south of the river—a warehouse that’s been converted into offices, but the upper floor has a flat. No one knows it belongs to me. It’s registered under a holding company, and the holding company is registered under a name that doesn’t exist.”

“And Finch won’t think to look there?” Clara asked.

“Finch thinks he knows every property I own,” Ashworth replied. “That’s the point. He’s mapped my public life. The warehouse is one of my private ones.”

Graves stood and moved to the window, peering through the curtain at the grey street below. A costermonger was wheeling his cart past, a newsboy shouting the morning headlines. Nothing unusual. No loiterers, no men in dark coats pretending to read newspapers.

“You’ll need to collect him yourself,” Graves said. “Don’t send a servant. If Finch has watchers on the station, they’ll know your cousin’s face from the photographs that would have been circulated. But they may not know yours—you’ve been careful about that. Walk straight to him, put him in the carriage, and don’t stop for anything.”

Ashworth’s jaw tightened. “I was planning to do exactly that.”

“Good.” Graves turned back to face the room. “Then you bring him to the warehouse, and you stay with him. Both of you. I’ll handle the rest.”

Clara rose from her chair, the blanket falling away. “The rest being what, exactly? The man who abducted me is still out there. The list still has twenty-three names on it. And the ledger that supposedly contains the key to all of this is still missing. What is ‘the rest’?”

Graves did not answer immediately. Instead he reached into his coat and withdrew a folded telegraph form that had been slipped under the door of his lodging house at four in the morning. He held it out to Clara.

“This came from a clerk at the Great Eastern Railway,” he said. “One of the men I used to work with before I left the force. He knows me well enough not to ask questions when I ask for schedule confirmations.”

Clara unfolded the paper and read it aloud. “Edmund Finch—private carriage, London to Cambridge, departing ten-eight. Then a second leg: Cambridge to a halt near Littleport, where a horse and trap were waiting. Destination recorded as a private estate north of the fens: Helmsley Grange.”

Ashworth swore under his breath. “Helmsley. I know of it. Finch’s father bought it forty years ago. It’s remote. Marshland for miles, a single road in, and no neighbours to speak of. If Finch has gone to ground there, he’ll have a clear view of anyone approaching.”

Graves nodded. “He left London last night, before the raid. He didn’t know we’d already been to Henley Court—he fled because he’d been warned about the warrant, but he couldn’t have known we recovered Clara or the list. He believes we’re still scrambling, still trying to find him in the city. He’s gone to ground in the fens to carry out his schedule without interruption.”

Clara folded the telegraph and handed it back. “Then we go to the fens.”

“Not we,” Graves said. “You and I have other work. I’ll need someone to keep watch on the warehouse while Ashworth collects his cousin. If Finch has any men left in London—and I suspect he does—they’ll be watching Ashworth’s known properties. The warehouse is unknown, but it’s only unknown until someone checks the right registry. I want you there, watching the street, with a whistle and a revolver.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re relegating me to sentry duty.”

“I’m giving you the task that keeps Lord Ashworth’s cousin alive while I ride north,” Graves said. “If I fail to stop Finch before the fourth day, that cousin is a dead man. But if Finch’s men find the warehouse before I reach Helmsley Grange, he’ll be dead sooner. You’re the only one I trust to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she gave a single curt nod and reached for her coat.

Ashworth stepped forward. “You’re going alone?”

“I’m going to scout,” Graves corrected. “I need to see the estate, understand the layout, know where the guard posts are and how many men Finch has brought with him. If I ride in blind, I’ll end up in the same cellar Clara just escaped. I’m not doing that again.”

Ashworth hesitated, then reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a heavy iron key on a ring. He pressed it into Graves’s palm.

“There’s a hunting box on the edge of the fens, about four miles from Helmsley Grange,” Ashworth said. “It belongs to me. Registered under a different name, but the same holding company that owns the warehouse. The key works. You’ll find food, blankets, a decent horse in the stable—and a rifle above the fireplace, if it comes to that.”

Graves closed his fingers around the key. “You keep saying you want to repay a debt to Eleanor. This is a start.”

Ashworth’s face darkened but he said nothing. He turned, took his coat from the hook by the door, and was gone.

Graves stood alone with Clara for a moment. She had her back to him, fastening the buttons of her own coat.

“You saw him—the man in the cellar beside me,” she said quietly, not turning. “Before you came down. He was one of the men who took me from Waterloo. He kept talking about a ledger. Not the one you found at Henley Court. He said the real ledger was the one Eleanor hid, and that without it, Finch would have to start the schedule over from the beginning.”

Graves let that sink in. “Start over? Meaning the ledger contains more than a list of names. It contains the mechanism—how the fraud was structured. If Finch loses that, he loses the ability to make the claims pay out.”

Clara turned to face him. “Then why is he going to the fens, where he can be cornered, instead of abandoning the whole scheme and fleeing the country? He has money. He has men. He could be in France by now.”

Graves looked down at the list of twenty-three names still lying open on the table. The cousin’s name sat at the top, marked with an ink cross.

“Because he hasn’t lost the ledger,” Graves said slowly. “He’s still looking for it. And he believes whoever holds it is still in England.”

Clara’s face went pale. “You think he’s going to the fens to kill someone who knows where it is.”

“I think,” Graves said, folding the list and placing it in his coat, “that Eleanor didn’t just hide the ledger. She gave it to someone. And Finch knows who that someone is. He’s gone north to finish what he started with her.”

He moved toward the door, then paused. “Watch the warehouse until Ashworth and his cousin are inside. If anyone approaches who doesn’t have the right key, fire one shot into the air. Then get yourself to the nearest telegraph office and send a message to Marsh at Oxford, no matter what I said earlier about trusting him. Tell him to come north with every man he can spare.”

Clara caught his sleeve. “And what do I tell him if you’re dead by the time he arrives?”

Graves managed a thin smile. “Tell him I found the ledger. And that I’m still trying to decide whether to use it to bury Finch, or to burn the whole scheme down and let the names on that list be the last anyone speaks of it.”

He left her standing in the grey morning light, the key to the hunting box already cold in his pocket.